Open letter to Governor Ned Lamont, submitted by Bill Sterling, Greenwich
Dear Governor Lamont,
I am a concerned parent with 2 kids under 11 in public school in CT. I am also a successful web app tech entrepreneur who has built and sold companies based on solutions and platforms that I personally created – so I’m very much a listener, problem solver, and an innovator. In college I double majored in economic philosophy (right-leaning teachers) and government (left-leaning teachers). That’s probably why I was good at software – the 2 key transferable skills I learned were 1) to be able see a problem/challenge from many perspectives to discover fundamental “truths” and the source-code behind ideas – and 2) to be able to recognize (and to have courage to speak) when the wrong problem was being solved.
As my governor, I have great respect for your office and role. I know holding a political office is difficult, and your are often given uncomfortable choices that are not easy to make.
It is my informed and strongly held belief that using emergency powers to remove freedoms is an example of trying to solve the wrong problem.
Never has a society succeeded for long that was controlled by force.
Leaders are more respected and followed not because they act to right some wrong, but because they act to inspire people to come together on what they are for (not on what they are against). In so doing they inspire people to voluntarily be (and keep trying to be) their better selves and to make more informed (free) choices.
I understand that one person’s freedom can be used to take another person’s freedom away. But the answer to that problem is not less freedom, it is more education and information. When people are given the full spectrum of information, more often than not, they will make better choices and reduce the acrimony. Furthermore, they will act with their “local knowledge” of what works best in their context – something that centralized decision making can never achieve (because it will never have all the local knowledge).
Human nature, though very capable of doing harm, is fundamentally more attracted to doing good things.
By showing that you believe in the better nature of people, you will inspire them to make better and more informed choices with their local knowledge at heart.
By now it is not “news” to most of your constituents (and to the free world) that science has been selectively politicized, preventing fundamental truths from being seen earlier. The centralized decision making of authorities (taking freedoms away) has harmed our country by orders of magnitude greater than the Covid Virus. It has attempted to rob the nation of local knowledge and informed (free) decisions.
History will not look kindly on those that during this period of great challenge threw away “settled principles” (paid for by our veterans and civil leaders) and “settled science” (what big pharma does not profit by).
The constitution of our great country is an amazing work of evolving art. And like all true art it is not perfect – but it is held together and completed by balanced tension. To try to erase part of that tension is to destroy the art.
Please do not seek renewal and codification of unnecessary emergency powers. More power is not the the answer to the problems of today. It will only be further abused by those that come after you.
The answer is more information sharing, more transparency, and more support for local (free) decision making
Please believe in the people. By doing so, you will inspire and achieve greater good than force can ever achieve.