One of the more absurd subplots to come out of the coronavirus crisis is that of the protestors angrily assembling and demanding the government reopen the country, highly contagious virus be damned. In Michigan, Virginia, Minnesota, and other states where Democratic governors have had the audacity to issue stay-at-home orders in order to protect people from a deadly disease, these groups have insisted their rights are being violated and health experts are killing the economy, and their freedom, for nothing. While they represent a small minority of Americans, the anti-social-distancing, apparently pro-COVID-19 activists have had their voices amplified by none other Donald Trump, our Jekyll & Hyde president, who last Thursday did an impression of a moderately reasonable individual when he said states that felt the need to remain closed should do so, and on Friday went off the rails by tweeting, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE VIRGINIA!” And because Trump surrounds himself almost exclusively with certifiable crackpots one of his advisers has lately been offering a uniquely insane take on such protests.

In interviews with CBS News and a YouTube show called Freedom on Tap, economist Stephen Moore, whose nomination to the Federal Reserve board crashed and burned last year on account of his complete and total lack of qualifications, has suggested—by saying outright—that the people demanding social distancing be stopped ASAP are the second coming of Rosa Parks. You know, the African American civil rights activist who refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white person as part of a protest against Alabama segregation laws that effectively dictated black people were lesser than their Caucasian counterparts, and who reportedly had Emmett Till, the 14-year-old who was murdered in Mississippi after speaking to a white woman in a grocery store, on her mind when she declined to move.

Speaking to CBS correspondent Major Garrett, Moore, who thought restrictions should’ve been loosened in early April, criticized the left for prioritizing human life over the health of the economy. “Where are the civil libertarians on the left?” he wondered aloud. “I mean, one of the things that I've found most interesting in my 35 years or so in politics and economics is it used to be the left was the—the American Civil Liberties Union stood up against big government taking away our rights. I’m not hearing a lot of objections of people on the left,” he said. “It’s interesting to me that the right has become more the Rosa Parks of the world than the left is.” Chatting with Freedom on Tap, Moore explained that he mentioned a planned Wisconsin rally to a donor who promised to “pay the bail and legal fees for anyone who gets arrested,” telling would-be protestors, “This is a great time, gentlemen and ladies, for civil disobedience. We need to be the Rosa Parks here and protest against these government injustices.”

Again, just in case you’ve gotten lost at any point, the government injustices Moore is referring to are the ones surrounding rules put in place to stop the spread of a deadly virus, while Parks’s injustices concerned wildly racist laws that allowed, among other things, two white men to kill a black teen for interacting with a white woman.

For those of you wondering why Moore has been given a platform—and a spot on Trump’s coronavirus economic advisory task force—it’s a great question for which there appears to be no good answer, other than “Trump prefers the people who surround him be at least as dumb as he is.” Prior to his unique take on the protestors and their alleged historical antecedents, and belief that the government should be reopened, like, yesterday, Moore was best known for spectacularly flaming out as one of Trump’s Fed nominees. After his candidacy was announced, it was immediately panned by a group of bipartisan economists, who said things like, “Call your favorite economist. Whether they’re left, right, libertarian or socialist, none of them will endorse Stephen Moore for the Fed. He’s manifestly unqualified”; “By the way, and I’m totally serious about this—I think Ivanka would be a better pick for the Fed than Stephen Moore”; and “An ideologue, charlatan, and hack. Frankly so bad the putatively serious economists in Trump administration should resign as matter of honor.” Also, things were further complicated by the matter of his past commentary—all jokes, he insisted—in which he wrote stuff like, “Is there no area in life where men can take vacation from women?”; objected to tax dollars going toward preventing violence against women; and praised a cartoon about Trump kicking “a black family,” i.e., the Obamas, “out of public housing.” Anyway, now he’s advising the president on when to reopen the country. Rosa Parks would be so proud!

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