By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | British thinker and science writer Matt Ridley has a reminder for anyone looking for a quick fix for coronavirus: Innovation takes time.
In what may be the most impactful and important non-fiction book of the year, Ridley’s “How Innovation Works” says we’ll eventually figure out how to deal with the deadly virus, but it won’t happen overnight.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The horrible surge in coronavirus cases being experienced in South Carolina has one root cause: a liberal impatience by conservatives who reopened the state too early. As a result, too many people have the disease. Too many will die as exhausted medical workers are at their breaking point.
If there’s ever a textbook example that policy matters, it’s in South Carolina’s immature response to dealing with the silent terror of the pandemic. And now, officials trying to play catch up with mask ordinances and other measures that should have been in place long ago.
Just compare what happened in South Carolina, where Gov. Henry McMaster lightly shut down businesses for a few short weeks to states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, where governors locked things down tightly for much longer. Those places have flattened the curve — albeit with big economic hits. But the virus there is now manageable — as long as people are careful. Here, it’s out of control.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | You wouldn’t walk barefoot and bare-chested into a shop, especially if it had a sign on a door that said, “No shoes. No shirt. No service.” To do so would be gross and rude.
So why in the world are people getting all bent out of shape when “No mask” becomes the same kind of societal no-no? At a time when more than 1,000 people in our state are picking up coronavirus every day, not wearing a mask in public is about as smart as walking barefoot on sun-baked pavement on a 100-degree day.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The curious thing about laws is they can be repealed.
When South Carolina legislators meet this week to talk about money, they need to add repealing the Heritage Act to the agenda. Twenty years ago, the act passed as the fulcrum of a compromise to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse dome. Now, its time has come. It needs to be shelved itself, gone like prohibition and old laws on fugitive slaves, sodomy, investment banking and miscegenation.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | If you want to understand the stark difference between business and government, look to NASCAR.
Just two days after Bubba Wallace, the racing sport’s only black driver, said it was time to remove the Confederate flag from NASCAR’s events and properties, the sport’s operating company did so. Two days. To get rid of the painful symbol of the South that’s been a visible feature at racing events for generations.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Now is not the time for the state’s black legislators to be timid. Now is the time to demand much more than has been on the table in a long time.
For the generations from slavery through Jim Crow and into modern times, South Carolina’s African American population has been beaten down, physically, mentally and emotionally.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Protest is just fine. Violence as a means of protest is just wrong, 100 times over. It accomplishes nothing positive. It emboldens evil.
Here and across the country, racial injustice is splitting America, much like it did five centuries ago. This week, just like in 1968, Americans watched a rocket blast into space and saw cities burn following the grisly murder of an African American man.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The woman and her two children walked into the house, quickly closing the door because it was a blustery winter day. They arrived to celebrate a daughter’s birthday.
The boy joined the other kids. The little girl, much younger, stuck near her mother. She was wearing a coat but had bare feet. Mucus bubbled around her nose. She was whiny. And obviously sick.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Buried beneath the headlines of coronavirus doom and gloom, you can still find a little good news.
Case in point: Renewable energy produced in the U.S. this year may yield more electricity than power that comes from coal-fired plants for the first time ever. Why? Because more people are at home and businesses have been empty, drained by people hunkering down in the pandemic.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | In these pandemic times, the state doesn’t want large groups of people to congregate. Yet it hasn’t expanded rules to allow people who want to shelter in place to vote by absentee ballot on June 9.
This makes absolutely no sense for anyone who has stood in long lines on election day, particularly now that there are more barriers to voting with identification requirements and new electronic machines still unfamiliar to many voters. More absentee voting would limit human contact — and potentially thwart the spread of coronavirus.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina! (2019) by editor and publisher Andy Brack offers incisive commentaries on the American South, politics, the common good and interesting South Carolina leaders. Available exclusively for Kindle for $7.99. A paperback version will be ready soon. Learn more.
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