Late in the last century, theater goers were jolted when a character in the X-Files movie declared that the Federal Emergency Management Agency can allow “the White House to suspend constitutional government upon declaration of a national emergency.” If the same line was used before thoughtful movie audiences nowadays, the response might be bitter cat calls or perhaps expletives unfit to quote on a high-toned website.

Five years ago, politicians in scores of nations proclaimed that they possessed almost unlimited power over everyone living in their domain. Around the globe, constitutional restrictions on presidents, prime ministers, and any other ruler vanished practically overnight. Those power grabs could not have occurred if they were not preceded by a vast increase in political illiteracy regarding Leviathan.

For more than half a century, experts and pundits have assured people that government power is far less dangerous than it appears. Even the most brazen abuses were usually ignored or papered over. In 1977, East Germany ransomed hundreds of its leading intellectuals and artists to West Germany because it did not wish to endure public criticism by its own citizens during an International Human Rights Conference. In spite of the human sale, there was no general revulsion against the East German government abroad. …

Trump administration appointees are promising to open the files and expose more of the lies and abuses that propelled Covid-19 policies. Washington owes full disclosure to everyone whose life was thrown into turmoil by Covid edicts. But there must also be an unflinching analysis of how so many Americans’ political thinking went so far astray as to blindly trust any government official who recited the phrase “Science and data.”

In the same way that every military invasion raises questions of national sovereignty, every regulatory invasion by officialdom should raise questions about the sovereignty of individuals over their own lives. What pretexts justify government massively transgressing the border of the individual’s own life? And is there any way to hold political intruders liable under the law?

“Absolute power with impunity kills” is one of the clearest lessons of the pandemic. How many Americans now recognize that fighting Covid with an iron fist was an unmitigated disaster? There will never be a vaccine to protect citizens against unlimited political power.