On Thursday, MSNBC’s Morning Joe eagerly touted the latest article from New York Times opinion writer at large Charlie Warzel, in which he warned that “America is Paying A Heavy Price for Freedom” amid the coronavirus pandemic. He compared those protesting against strict stay-at-home orders with gun rights supporters and accused them all of having “a very selfish, a very narrow definition of what that freedom means.”
Co-host Mika Brzezinski welcomed Warzel to the program by reciting some of the most incendiary passages from his screed:
His latest piece is entitled, “Open States, Lots of Guns. America is Paying A Heavy Price for Freedom.” And he writes in part, “As in the gun control debate, public opinion, public health and the public good seem poised to lose out to a select set of personal freedoms. But it’s a child’s two-dimensional view of freedom, one where any suggestion of collective duty and responsibility for others become the chains of tyranny. This idea of freedom is also an excuse to serve one’s self before others and a shield to hide from responsibility. In the gun rights fight, that freedom manifests in firearms falling into unstable hands. During a pandemic, that freedom manifests in rejections of masks, despite evidence to suggest they protect both the wearers and the people around them.”
Turning to her guest, Brzezinski urged him to hurl more attacks: “To your piece, which I think is fascinating, but the desensitization that Americans seem to feel about gun violence, you worry, will now apply to coronavirus deaths. If you could take the theory a little further and expound upon it?”
He blasted gun rights advocates: “And what those people want is a very narrow definition of gun rights which is, ‘I can have anything and I can take as much as I want, and I can use that freedom to intimidate, to serve myself first. To do whatever I want, everyone else be damned.’”
Warzel then attempted to draw a line between the gun issue and the debate over when to reopen the country in the wake of COVID-19:
And that is very similar to the debate we’re seeing with the reopening protests, with this idea of going out in public with the virus. It is a debate that is defined by a very small fringe of people. A fringe of people that unfortunately includes the President of the United States and many of his top advisers. But this group of people has a very selfish, a very narrow definition of what that freedom means....This is a freedom that allows people to intimidate, it allows people to not feel safe.
Later in the discussion, he fretted that both topics demonstrated that “we have basically resigned ourselves to the fact that, you know, ‘What can we do? This is the price we pay for freedom.’”
The media have struggled with the concepts of freedom and constitutional rights in recent weeks. On Wednesday, left-wing commentator Anand Giridharadas appeared on Morning Joe to rant against “freedom-obsessed” Americans. On April 22, MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell was upset by the fact that Attorney General William Barr vowed to protect the constitutional rights of citizens objecting to harsh stay-at-home orders. Appearing on NBC’s Today show on April 29, liberal filmmaker Ken Burns argued that “individual freedom” should give way to the “central role” of government in a crisis.
It’s troubling that the first instinct of some journalists during difficult times is to start curtailing freedom and attack anyone who challenges that controversial approach.
Here is a full transcript of the May 7 segment on Morning Joe:
8:50 AM ET
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Joining us now, New York Times opinion writer at large Charlie Warzel. His latest piece is entitled, “Open States, Lots of Guns. America is paying a heavy price for freedom.” And he writes in part, “As in the gun control debate, public opinion, public health and the public good seem poised to lose out to a select set of personal freedoms. But it’s a child’s two-dimensional view of freedom, one where any suggestion of collective duty and responsibility for others become the chains of tyranny. This idea of freedom is also an excuse to serve one’s self before others and a shield to hide from responsibility. In the gun rights fight, that freedom manifests in firearms falling into unstable hands. During a pandemic, that freedom manifests in rejections of masks, despite evidence to suggest they protect both the wearers and the people around them.”
Which, by the way, Charlie, the President did yesterday in the Oval Office, surrounded by at least a dozen nurses and frontline workers all standing two feet apart from each other, not wearing masks, probably at the direction of the President because most people would like to wear masks, not only to protect themselves but to protect others from their own droplets. That’s the reason for them. And the President chooses to flout that publicly every day.
To your piece, which I think is fascinating, but the desensitization that Americans seem to feel about gun violence, you worry, will now apply to coronavirus deaths. If you could take the theory a little further and expound upon it?
CHARLIE WARZEL: So when we’re looking at the gun violence debate, what we’re really looking at is a debate defined by a very few select people, a small group of people who don’t represent gun owners at large. Gun owners at large are responsible, they care about protecting others, as well as, you know, protecting themselves. It’s a very nuanced debate. It is one that involves the medical community, involves law enforcement, involves the government. And that debate is basically silenced by a very small group of people. And what those people want is a very narrow definition of gun rights which is, “I can have anything and I can take as much as I want, and I can use that freedom to intimidate, to serve myself first. To do whatever I want, everyone else be damned.”
And that is very similar to the debate we’re seeing with the reopening protests, with this idea of going out in public with the virus. It is a debate that is defined by a very small fringe of people. A fringe of people that unfortunately includes the President of the United States and many of his top advisers. But this group of people has a very selfish, a very narrow definition of what that freedom means. It’s not a collective freedom. It’s not a freedom in which we’re stronger together. It is not a freedom that thinks about picking up, you know, those whose rights are always in lesser consideration. This is a freedom that allows people to intimidate, it allows people to not feel safe.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: And your theory is also, interestingly, it’s sort of backed up by numbers as well. Someone might say, “Oh, my gosh, no, I mean, coronavirus has killed almost 75,000 people. This is an incredible human catastrophe that has struck this country in just a few months time.” But if you look at the numbers of deaths in mass shootings, I think most people are quite surprised to see how often and how many people die.
WARZEL: What really got me thinking about this comparison is, you know, the fact that we have gun violence and deaths as a result in the United States every day and sometimes we have these mass shootings. They make the news, but so many of the suicides in rural areas don’t. Even shootings in schools now are so prevalent that they don’t make the news.
And it felt very analogous to the situation we have right now. We’re obviously very fixated on the coronavirus and the death toll and we talk about it a lot. But you know, 2,000 people, nearly, are dying a day, maybe a little bit less at the moment. It’s projected to go higher. And we’re not able to process that death toll adequately because every day there’s a new wave of that. And so, as with gun violence, it makes me think that, you know, because we have to sort of mentally protect ourselves and because we’re not getting any help from the government to stem this, and because we’re trying to open society back up very soon, if not right now, that we might just get used to this.
And that, to me, is the nightmare scenario about this, is that this becomes normal to look at the news every morning and see a death toll of 1,500 to 3,000 people. And that is similar to what we see with gun violence. On a different scale, yes. But we have basically resigned ourselves to the fact that, you know, “What can we do? This is the price we pay for freedom.”
WILLIE GEIST: Hey, Charlie, it’s Willie. Good to see you this morning. Yeah, I keep thinking about that every morning when we see these announcements of death totals and it goes up. It becomes sort of part of the day, and it’s terrible and it’s tragic, but it becomes a routine, almost, to see the numbers go up. And we have heard in both cases, guns and in the case of this coronavirus pandemic, that there’s just going to be an acceptable number of deaths that we have to live with in order to maintain freedom, which we all want to do, or to go back to work. If we want to open our society and stop seeing it Thursday – on Thursdays at 8:30 every week, these terrible unemployment numbers, we have to accept that we will wake up every morning and hear these terrible numbers of deaths. Does it look to you inevitable that, as many doctors have said, and this is going to come back in the fall, that this will just become part of our lives every day?
WARZEL: You know, I’m obviously not a doctor, but I think it’s impossible to ignore the reality that we have done very little to actually vanquish this illness. We do not have a vaccine. We do not have a true tested therapeutic that’s going to get out of this. We don’t have a test, trace and isolate system like countries like South Korea. So we actually haven’t done the work, and yet, we believe that, you know, there is, obviously, so many people hurting, we do need to, you know, have some economic activity. We do need to get people into jobs. But the government hasn’t done the steps yet to get us there. And yet, we’re reopening anyhow.
States are very concerned, people are very concerned. You know, public opinion is that people are afraid of this and they don’t want to go back out until they know that they can be safe. And that's similar to the public opinion of people who are sending their kids to schools and don’t want them to be, you know, shot. We’re afraid because we’re not being protected by the people who should be doing that protecting. And so what we’ve done instead is we’ve resigned ourselves to the fact that this is, you know, this is the price that we pay for living our lives. And that is, frankly, that’s just not a true calculation.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Opinion writer at large for The New York Times, Charlie Warzel. Thank you very, very much.
