That trait manifested yet again concerning
Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry’s
opinion about, specifically,
a face covering requirement issued by Democrat Shreveport Mayor Adrian Perkins
but expanded to address Edwards’ recent proclamation 89
JBE 2020. That order issued a masking requirement for anybody age 8 or
older in public indoor places with “commercial establishments” responsible for
enforcement (the Perkins version for Shreveport added penalties such as turning
off the city-run water at noncompliant businesses), as well as closing bars,
all in response to rising infection and hospitalization rates from the Wuhan
coronavirus pandemic.
The opinion provided the legal justification to
sentiments expressed here:
the masking requirement – not just as it relates to individuals but for the
supposed enforcement – didn’t have enough justification to permit the
curtailment of liberties ordered. It doesn’t cancel the order, but provides a
basis to a court challenge and leaves the legality of enforcement in doubt.
Practically speaking, it won’t have a large
impact. Prior to the ruling, a number
of local governments said they wouldn’t enforce it (essentially meaning they
wouldn’t direct officers to intervene if a business wanted to expel customers
without as mask unless a ruckus broke out or cite businesses that don’t enforce
the proclamation), and maybe more might emulate the opinion’s caution on enforcement.
And it will expire in any event on Jul. 24, unless renewed.
The most notable consequence came from the reaction by
Edwards, who doesn’t like to brook any opposition (even as Landry
successfully has challenged legally other Edwards executive actions). He
called the opinion “politically motivated,” saying he wondered why Landry had
once supported “extraordinary measures” but not now. In
response, Landry noted the nature of the crisis was different now than
then, when the state’s health care resources approached capacity as opposed to
the adequate slack at present, and had addressed that in the opinion in
observing the absence of that condition made the burden of proof for stripping
essential liberties insufficient.
This is typical Edwards: assert that his policy
choices are not driven by politics and declare therefore anything different is politically
motivated, which obscures the reality that politics drives his decisions. The
question at hand cannot avoid political judgment: either Edwards goes too far
in allowing overriding liberties because the emergency situation doesn’t meet
the burden of proof required, or he doesn’t. Landry delivered a fine exposition
why in his judgment, using existing jurisprudence, Edwards overstepped.
Edwards sees otherwise, because of a fundamentally
different view of governing that places less value on the autonomy of the
individual, seeing an erosion of that more towards serfdom as acceptable, with government
having greater power to command and control in the name of protecting a people
defined less autonomously and more dependently as individual human beings. By devaluing
the dignity of the individual and therefore the strength of the political liberties
attached to that, it requires in his mind a lower burden of proof to interfere
with those liberties. That doesn’t make his word the definitive apolitical pronouncement
from on high about a controversial subject.
Political judgment played a role in his proclamation,
but his reaction to criticism of the proclamation reveals a more naked
politicization of the issue. By responding this way, Edwards, who has a history
of disregarding data inconvenient to his pandemic-related policy, can
create a scapegoat for the policy failings that have typified his pandemic response
to date. If Louisiana continues among the worst states by the numbers four
months into the crisis, at some point a governor no longer can point the finger
of blame at anybody else but himself. Edwards needs another distraction from a
weary public catching on to his culpability, and he attempts to provide himself
with another future excuse in alleging Landry’s opinion encouraged subversion
of his order that would have solved everything.
The latest surge in cases and hospitalizations –
but which hasn’t occurred in deaths – comes as a consequence of a much
more youthful skew in victims, and will contribute to an acquisition of
herd immunity much more likely to place the pandemic into submission than a
crackdown on liberty. Again, keep in mind this isn't the Andromeda Strain. If anything, Edwards order might cause more suffering because
it would delay that acquisition and keep the vulnerable threatened longer, but,
hopefully, not.
In the final analysis, this event again demonstrates
that whenever you hear Edwards protesting that somebody else is playing
politics, you can bet he’s the one actually doing it.
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