This story is from Democracy Digest:

Democratic governments have implemented measures similar to those by autocracies in response to the pandemic. Are these value trade-offs temporary experiments, or will they be here to stay? asks Adam Przeworski, Professor Emeritus in New York University’s Department of Politics.

The liberal values we cherish include not only the freedom of movement but also of being able to freely associate, to join in religious observances, and to protect our privacy from the eyes of the State, he writes for The Global:

The lesson of the reactions to the COVID-19 crisis is that when death looms, these values retract. What that means about us as human beings is profound. Physical survival is an imperative; everything else is a luxury. Patrick Henry’s exclamation – “Give me liberty or give me death” – appears as an aberration.

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