Pragmatism is the true rot at the heart of our institutions, political, educational, cultural, the gamut. That it leads to tyranny is predictable. Tyranny, after all, is much more pragmatic. It is far more efficient. It can achieve ends much faster, and much simpler, than the rocky, sclerotic, openness for which the West is rightly famous.

The overreach of government is a common refrain among conservatives this pandemic, and not without cause. As those such as Father Raymond de Souza, Ed Bosveld, and others have argued, the State has not merely expanded to the occasion of the crisis, nor only taken powers upon itself it finds necessary to meet the threat. It is the way that it has done so, with an aw shucks kind of pragmatism that every day folks just need to understand. As the impossible trinity has it, of fast, stable, and open, you can only have two.

That argument itself overreaches though when it puts too much stock in this tyrannical motivation. Father de Souza argues, for example, that State overreach—no argument from me on that part—is motivated by a tyrannical desire to put its subjects in its place, remind businesses who has what power and chasten pastors about who is allowed to say what.

But the essential problem is not a slide into tyranny. I doubt this motivates many of our public servants, or even some of the most activist judges. State overreach is the consequence of a much more seemingly innocuous pathology: pragmatism.

Pragmatism: that common sense logic that preaches that you gotta do what you gotta do, and that when things stand in your way, you have to find a way around them. We stay up until it’s solved. We work until it’s done. There’s a blue collar “can do” spirit that dresses up this sickness, and it makes it go down easy. Who among us has time for board policy manuals, or Robert’s Rules? We have things that need doing. Action is demanded.

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