“the public good seems poised to lose out to a select set of personal freedoms… where any suggestion of collective duty and responsibility for others become the chains of tyranny.”

As in the gun control debate, public opinion, public health and the public good seem poised to lose out to a select set of personal freedoms. But it’s a child’s two-dimensional view of freedom — one where any suggestion of collective duty and responsibility for others become the chains of tyranny.

This idea of freedom is also an excuse to serve one’s self before others and a shield to hide from responsibility. In the gun rights fight, that freedom manifests in firearms falling into unstable hands. During a pandemic, that freedom manifests in rejections of masks, despite evidence to suggest they protect both the wearers and the people around them.

It manifests in a rejection of public health by those who don’t believe their actions affect others.

In this narrow worldview, freedom has a price, in the form of an “acceptable” number of human lives lost. It’s a price that will be calculated and then set by a select few. The rest of us merely pay it

source: NYTimes, James Warzel

Open States, Lots of Guns. America Is Paying a Heavy Price for Freedom.

This country seems resigned to preventable firearm deaths. It appears that the same is starting to happen with fatalities from the pandemic.

 

Advertisement