An acquaintance with a moderate Twitter following has observed in these CCP Virus times, that

On my Twitter feed it’s the liberals (without a single exception) who are the most absolutist about quarantine behavior.

Golly Gee Willikins, how could that be, considering that our liberal friends are the ones in our society that most fervently profess their faith in liberation from hegemony and oppression?

For instance, in my North Seattle neighborhood you can see lots of #WeBelieve yard-signs that sprouted right after Trump’s 2016 victory, you also can see “Hate has no Home Here” yard signs, you can see “We’re Glad You’re Our Neighbor” signs in four languages, you can see “Be the One” yard signs. But you will not see a yard sign like the one that I am thinking up. It says: “My Social Moralizing Yard Sign.”

Yeah. “I can’t believe he did that.” That’s what the nice liberal ladies would say. But when it comes to Keeping Us Safe, the nice liberal ladies are fervent hegemonists.

And they are right there behind our Democratic governor and his credentialed experts demanding that everyone follow the quarantine diktats.

That, I take it, was the point of Jordan B. Peterson writing about lobsters in his bestselling 12 Rules. Keeping your place in the hierarchy is, if not as old as the hills, certainly as old as lobsters, peasant. And liberal ladies are right up there at the top.

My nickel says that none of those credentialed experts has ever dared to think of having a yard-sign like mine that makes fun of the nice liberal-lady yard signs. On the contrary, every expert knows that his reputation as an expert -- not to mention his pension -- depends on following the received opinion from on high.

And it all makes sense. If you are a liberal, you have probably lived your entire life in a structured environment where there is only one answer. Our school system, of course, is always promoting the One Big Idea, whether it is preparing workers for the factory in 1900 or preparing activistes for peaceful protest today. When the educated graduates get into the work force they join rigid one-answer organizations that are designed like armies, with a fixed chain of command. And that applies to tech, full of good little boys and girls that have gotten the credentials needed to work in those behemoths.

Religions, from the Axial Age down to Marxism and its variants, have all believed in the One True Answer.

But our age is different. Start anywhere: the Protestant Reformation, where Commoners told the religious experts that, sorry chum, we are going to read these new printed Bibles for ourselves.

Then we have the Great Enrichment of the last 200 years, Deirdre McCloskey, proprietor, where ordinary Commoners “Having a Go” increased per capita income by 3,000 percent starting with machine textiles and now with know-nothings wringing oil and gas out of frackable rock. Didn’t they know that Malthus had declared we were all going to die?

And it’s not just business. German generals realized in the 19th century that no battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. Then, during World War I they realized that no general can supervise all the details of battle; responsibility has to be delegated down to the lowest possible level.

Why? Because there is no true answer. There is only trial and error.

It’s come to the point where even Google Search has not yet banned the heretical notion that “if you are not making mistakes you are not doing anything.”

So when anyone writes that President Trump has made a lot of mistakes in his Wu Flu response, they are missing the point. Of course, he has made mistakes; he has been making decisions. Ergo, some of them were wrong.

Here’s an example of a wrong decision. California Governor Newsom closed the beaches of Orange County based on a 380mm telephoto picture in the Orange County Register. Hey, I know. What would be the appropriate level of government to make such a decision? God? Secretary General of the United Nations? U.S. President? State Governor? County Executive? I wonder.

Hey Gavin! Next time, ask about the focal length of the lens. Live and learn, pal.

All I am trying to say is that the modern revolution in knowledge has demonstrated all over the place that the One True Answer doesn’t work in the real world. In the real world everyone is always moving, adapting, and self-correcting.

So if you are an enthusiast for the One True Answer, it just shows that you are hopelessly stuck in the past, and its old superstitions and bigotries.

Go ahead. Shelter in place. So long as you have a government job that keeps the food on the table.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.