If We Can Shut Down America for COVID-19, Dems Can Shut It Down for Climate Change

By James Morganelli

“The dam has been broken,” author and nationally syndicated radio host Dennis Prager warns. “Maybe it was necessary. But when dams break, flooding follows.”

In a Tuesday piece for American Greatness, “Why the Remedy May Be Worse Than the Disease,” Prager issues a dire warning for a country reeling from a self-imposed shutdown.

In the scramble to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Americans must be vigilant against the kind of cure some may prescribe.

“We can only be certain that shutting down virtually every part of society will result in a large number of people economically ruined, life savings depleted, decades of work building a restaurant or some other small business destroyed,” Prager explains.

“But the longer-term ripple effects are potentially far worse,” he warns.

“Communist parties don’t fare well in robust economies,” Prager adds. “But they’re very tempting when people are in dire economic straits. Only God knows what economic dislocation the shutting down of American and other Western economies will lead to.”

Prager is right.

The COVID-19 virus does not simply represent a health threat — it has also sparked a larger calamity the likes of which we are just now beginning to see, but can hardly imagine.

Looming bankruptcies.

Skyrocketing unemployment.

Supply line disruptions.

Fear of social unrest.

And that doesn’t even take into account an impending psychological emergency from the exhaustion of dealing with constant crisis.

Prager issues a prediction: “If the government can order society to cease functioning, from restaurants and other businesses to schools, due to a possible health disaster, it is highly likely that a Democratic president and Congress will similarly declare emergency and assert authoritarian rule in order to prevent what they consider the even greater ‘existential threat’ to human life posed by global warming.”

Could America close to “protect” itself from global warming? Could shutdowns and “shelter-in-place” orders be imposed for say, higher CO2 levels, ozone alert days or farting cows?

Will coal and nuclear energy, air travel and beef be labeled enemies of the state for the greater good?

Is this current shutdown just the kind of roadmap that climate authoritarians need to take control?

Eventually, the balance of power in America will shift. This being an election year, America will have to decide what kind of country it wants to be.

Will Americans vote to adopt short-term fixes with long-term consequences, like implementing socialistic authoritarianism endlessly reliant upon government?

Or will America learn a valuable lesson about domestic production and freeing up the vitality of the private sector to do earlier and better what government cannot and arguably should not be doing?

The choice will be ours.