In A.D. 1377, the Arab scholar and retired statesman Ibn Khaldun published his famous Preface to the study of world history.

Despite the rapidly growing damage to the economy, workers and people’s emotional well-being, surveys have shown a high degree of popular support for the coronavirus lockdown.

It is an old American pastime to worry that the government—or our political opponents—will exploit a crisis for undesirable ends, what James Madison described as “the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in government.”