“‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.”

— F.A. Hayek

These are weird and hairy times. Tensions are high.

Bernie Sanders dropped an F-bomb on a reporter who dared to ask his plans after another day of dismal election results. President Donald Trump attacked a reporter who had the gall to ask Trump to provide encouraging words to a nation frightened by a global pandemic and economic meltdown.

And, on social media, some of my otherwise reasonable friends are bashing the press and others for questioning Trump or Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in this time of crisis.

“Now is not the time,” they say. “Can’t you see they’re dealing with an emergency?”

Bollocks.

Tough questions are needed now more than ever. Tougher questions. Now is not the time for the press to wear kid gloves. Now is the time for the gloves to come off.

We grant our leaders extraordinary power in emergencies. We forsake some of our supposedly inalienable rights. Forget not that peaceable assemblage is protected by the First Amendment, yet governors around the country have ordered that right suspended by prohibiting gatherings or, as Whitmer did on Monday, ordering us to stay home except for essential travel.

Perhaps it’s a worthy tradeoff for the greater good (in the case of the coronavirus, I’d argue it is), but we shouldn’t take any politician’s word for it.

We need a vigorously independent press to demand our leaders prove the need for such expansive powers. We need someone to demand they show us the data to justify the usurpment of our rights and the crippling of our economy. If they’ve proven those steps are needed, we need to ask why more wasn’t done sooner.

When they want to spend $2 trillion of what is essentially our children’s children’s children’s money, we need a press to demand our leaders explain the need, show how it’ll help, and account for every dime.

As Hayek said, the government has always used emergencies to expand its power.

And some of the nastiest things have been done with that power.

Franklin Roosevelt used emergency powers to intern tens of thousands of Asian Americans during World War II. Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all used war or the threat of war to justify expansive domestic spying. Bush, Obama, and Trump claimed emergency to justify what amounted to extrajudicial executions through targeted drone attacks.

The very ideals of our nation are put to their greatest tests in emergencies. And I think our greatest ideal is that we do not follow our leaders blindly, because their power on this earth comes from us, not any deity or bloodline.

And that means our leaders need to account for their decisions so voters and history itself can judge the merits of those choices and learn from leaders’ mistakes.

Does that mean the press should ask Trump whether his use of the term “Chinese virus” is racist? I don’t know if that’s a question I would ask right away myself, though public health officials and experts on racism suggest the term could be damaging (by the way, media-bashers, you have the much-hated New York Times to thank for our understanding of the Chinese government’s efforts to conceal the spread of the virus; they were reporting on it over a month ago).

But, whether or not I would ask that question myself, I would defend forever the right of another reporter to ask it.

None of that is to say the press should be intentionally obstructive.

It’s like covering a house fire. You hang back, making sure to stay out of firefighters’ way until there’s a lull, when you can approach the chief or whatever captain is in charge of the scene to get in a few questions.

When COVID-19 hit Michigan, we called Denise Bryan, head of the District Health Department No. 4, to find out how we could check in for information every day without getting in her way. We worked out twice-daily calls. But, when Bryan said the calls were getting hard on her and the Health Department would post data online daily, we stopped calling except for specific things that need clearing up.

We shouldn’t deliberately get in the way. We should be courteous and flexible with our leaders’ time as they work for us.

But we should expect they make time to answer questions, and, when they do — as in Trump’s and Whitmer’s regular coronavirus briefings — asking the hard questions is not un-American.

It’s as patriotic as you can get.

Justin A. Hinkley can be reached at 989-358-5686 or jhinkley@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley.