| | | When you are required to wear an idiot mask into the post office that is a removal of a freedom.
I never said or suggested otherwise. Quit reading into what I say.
I'm only saying that we willingly give up small freedoms every day to live in a supporting society. We drive on the right side of the road. We wear shirts and shoes when we enter a restaurant. We don't point and laugh at handicapped people. We don't spit on the sidewalk. We don't throw hazardous materials in the trash.
And we willingly give up more in a national emergency. In a representative government, it's a national emergency when our representatives say it is, not when we individually think it is. There is a benefit and a cost to living in society. Through social interaction and the political system, we bend towards keeping the costs down and agree, at least nominally, that the benefit far outweighs the cost.
This mask thing is totally out of proportion to the above. It's a small thing when weighed against the risk of the country falling apart. It's a small thing even on an absolute level. Even if masks are, indeed, virtually useless, we try to argue the point and perhaps prevail, but meanwhile we wear them because of the above, because it's the right thing to do.
So, making anti-masking into the cause celebre that it is has either or both of two bases. One is that the protesters are actively dispensing with the commonweal, overthrowing it. The other is that they are just a bunch of spoiled brats invoking sacred principles like freedom to rationalize their petty selfishness and wantonness.
Re the latter case, deplorable may be too generous a word. Re the former, if freedom truly is the alpha value, trumping all others, then we have anarchy and heaven help us. |
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