A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column arguing that while a stay-at-home order might be justified as an initial response to an immediate and poorly understood public-health threat, it wasn’t “sustainable” for more than a few weeks.

The 1930s had the Great Depression. The early 21st century had the Great Recession. Now, in the 2020s, we are suffering a Great Suppression.

 Does North Carolina lock up too many people? I’ve long thought so.

 As painful as it is to live under North Carolina’s partial lockdown, just imagine how much worse it would be if the COVID-19 outbreak were happening before the advent of the Internet.

Over the past two weeks, Gov. Roy Cooper and local officials have imposed a regulatory regime of increasing severity on North Carolinians. Their stated goal is to slow the spread of COVID-19 so the number of cases requiring hospitalization won’t shoot far above the maximum capacity of hospitals and other health providers.

As North Carolina and other states inch towards increasingly draconian measures in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, we are all weighing the potential costs of both underreaction and overreaction.

The COVID-19 outbreak has already taken lives, disrupted families and communities, and inflicted significant damage on our economy. Will it also inflict significant damage on the core institutions of our free society?

 If you draw your information about current events only from politicians, news outlets, and social-media influencers that share your worldview, you will be poorly informed. If you act on that information, you and others may come to regret it.

 Lately I’ve been reflecting on North Carolina’s celebrated history as, well, the political equivalent of a cantankerous old coot.

When I began my syndicated column in 1986, politics in North Carolina, and in America more generally, was strikingly different from today’s political scene in many ways. How voters get and process political information has changed, for example. Campaign strategy and tactics have adjusted accordingly.