Perhaps now isolated at home, imagine a stroll through the stunning United States Naval Academy campus at Annapolis, a campus of lovely buildings, manicured grounds, and everywhere whispers of bravery, service and sacrifice.

The COVID-19 pandemic challenges the normal divisions of politics and economics, that is, the way we look at what governments should do with our money and its own money. Normally that problem pits market-based endeavors against government-based endeavors. But this is not a normal time. Now everyone wants more government intervention.

Should we ever let people die? That is, when reasonable efforts and not unreasonable expenses would save a life should we ever send an individual to their death? Never is a difficult standard, here as everywhere, as we send young people to war, remove dying and incurable patients from life-support, and, in the workplace, construct tunnels and buildings and open mining operations with the near certainty that significant numbers of workers will die in the effort.

We Americans take pride in our freedom. No one can take that from us. Is that true? What about a bug with the name of COVID-19, the coronavirus? What about every mayor, governor or health commissioner in the United States? Could any or all of them put us in a lockdown, the term generally associated with inmates in a prison, to be let out when, if and in a manner they determine? Does the common welfare (health) override somehow all of our rights: no speech, shopping, worship or walking the dog? Perhaps no voting (that later).