Attorney General William P. Barr said Wednesday that imposing a national stay-at-home order to combat the novel coronavirus would be “the greatest intrusion on civil liberties” in U.S. history besides slavery.
Speaking at Hillsdale College in south central Michigan, Mr. Barr compared slavery to calls for the U.S. government to impose coast-to-coast coronavirus restrictions.
“You know, putting a national lockdown, stay-at-home orders, is like house arrest. It’s — you know, other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history,” Mr. Barr said during a question-and-answer session following his remarks.
Majority Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, called the remark among “the most ridiculous, tone-deaf, God-awful things I’ve ever heard.”
“Slavery was not about saving lives. It was about devaluing lives,” Mr. Clyburn reacted on CNN. “This pandemic is a threat to human life.”
President Trump has refrained from ordering any nationwide stay-at-home order to slow the spread of COVID-19, the contagious and potentially deadly disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
The White House has instead left it to governors to decide whether to impose statewide travel and business restrictions in the months since thousands of Americans started contracting COVID-19.
Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden previously said he would issue a nationwide stay-at-home order if successful in defeating Republican incumbent Mr. Trump in November’s election.
Mr. Biden has also encouraged governors to require that residents wear face masks in public and noted that experts believe it could save 40,000 lives if widely adopted for three months straight.
COVID-19 can be spread from person-to-person, including through respiratory droplets that are expelled when a person carrying the disease coughs, talks or sneezes.
Public health experts accordingly discourage gathering in large groups indoors and recommend that people wear masks when in public that cover their nose and mouth.
More than 29 million people worldwide have contracted COVID-19 since it was discovered late last year in China, according to Johns Hopkins University. The global population is nearly 8 billion.
In the U.S., more than 6.6 million people have contracted COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins, or around 2% of the nation’s population. Of those, more than 196,00 have died from the disease.
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