Governors Must Hold Firm on Stay-at-Home Orders

Forty-two states, three counties, nine cities, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have ordered residents to close physical locations for nonessential businesses and to stay at home to combat the novel coronavirus pandemic. These orders disrupt lives and threaten livelihoods — and have stirred conservative protests. On Friday, President Trump’s tweets to “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA,” further fueled discontent with these orders.

In many ways, Trump is invoking a key characteristic of American identity: weariness of strong government. But there is another equally important American tradition that he is disregarding: the revolutionary idea that governance of the nation should come from the states. Known as anti-Federalists by the late 1780s, these Americans believed the best response to too much government power was to vest more power in state governments. They considered state governments as governments of the people, the type of governments where the people are most heard and the form of government best thought to enact measures for the public good.

The fate of our response to the virus and its disease, covid-19, seems to depend on whether this early constitutional tradition can keep enough Americans at home to sufficiently slow the spread of the coronavirus — and calm the partisan flames the president is attempting to stir.

American wariness of strong government dates to the 17th century. In 1620, a group of Church of England separatists crossed the Atlantic Ocean and settled in Plymouth, Mass., to be free from government oversight in their practice of religion. But for most American communities, fears of strong government solidified during the American Revolution.