From 9/11 to COVID, Every Emergency Means Bigger Government

These emergencies have become excuses for permanent political power grabs, for restrictions on individual liberties large and small, for mass bureaucratization and mass expansion of government spending, trillions of dollars' worth of non-solutions to deep-rooted problems.

They have helped fuel a bigger, more powerful federal government, one that is more costly, more intrusive, more bureaucratized, operating on a permanent emergency footing, despite doing little or nothing to solve the underlying issue.

Politicians and policy makers do not seem especially ready to end emergency governing, or the general sense of alarm that has fueled so many emergency measures over the last year.

President Joe Biden has committed only to the notion that Christmas 2021 will feel more normal than Christmas 2020, whatever that means.

To some extent this is just more of the same, a slow and steady expansion of the big, kludgy government we've always had. The petty authoritarianism of take-off-your-sneakers is not unlike the petty authoritarianism of you-can't-sit-at-the-bar.

The emergency never ends, because someone, somewhere, always needs the emergency to continue.

I would say that government by emergency cannot become normal, that we cannot let the state of exception become the normal state of affairs-but in too many ways, we already have.

https://reason.com/2021/02/25/from-9-11-to-covid-every-emergency-means-bigger-government/