Freedom is a big thing these days. For conservatives it’s often about freedom from government – taxation, regulation, gun control – and from liberal mania. For liberals it’s often about freedom from the rich and powerful – low wages, discrimination, incarceration – and from conservative oppression.
Ironically, both sides say they simply want the same thing, those freedoms our forefathers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and sought to institutionalize in the U.S. Constitution – “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
But each side sees those things through different lenses. And each side wants what it wants now and to hades with the other side. This chasm between the two sides subverts the founders’ goals.
Former Attorney General William Barr, bless his heart, accurately described a root of this dilemma in remarks delivered at Notre Dame in 2019.
“The challenge we face is precisely what the Founding Fathers foresaw would be our supreme test as a free society. They never thought the main danger to the republic came from external foes. The central question was whether, over the long haul, we could handle freedom. The question was whether the citizens in such a free society could maintain the moral discipline and virtue necessary for the survival of free institutions.”
“Men are subject to powerful passions and appetites, and, if unrestrained, are capable of ruthlessly riding roughshod over their neighbors and the community at large. No society can exist without some means for restraining individual rapacity.”
Hmmm.
How to restrain “individual rapacity” in a free society?
Steve Forbes published an interesting perspective of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review in 1997.
“The order of these rights – first life, then freedom, and then the equal opportunity to pursue one’s own happiness – was written with great care and precision, not haphazardly. The Founders understood the need to balance man’s right to be free with man’s responsibility to be honest, just, and fair. For example, if it makes you happy to shoot and kill someone while you rob a bank – well, the law says you’re out of luck. A person’s right to live supersedes your ‘freedom’ to steal and murder. This may seem obvious, but it is profound.
“Switch the order of these fundamental human rights – putting happiness before liberty, or liberty before life – and you end up with moral chaos and social anarchy.”
In other words, your pursuit of happiness should not infringe upon another’s liberty. Nor, should your liberty infringe upon another’s life.
Life first, then.
Hmmm.
Conservatives argue such to decry abortion. Liberals argue such to decry the death penalty. Otherwise, concern for life seems to get the back seat behind liberty and pursuit of happiness.
The current yaya over wearing masks depicts this. As the Delta variant to COVID-19 surges and state health officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs calls for wearing masks, unrestrained “individual rapacity” for liberty and lifestyle (hell no to masks) poses great risks to the lives of others.
Such goes life today with so many on both sides contributing to the moral chaos and social anarchy infecting America.
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves” – Philippians 2:3.
Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.
30 comments:
Amen! Well reasoned.
Get vaccinated, masks go away. Life is preserved.
Bill Crawford is so full of __it!
The richest and most powerful people in America (Bezos, Buffet, Gates, the Google boys, Kennedy’s et al) vote Democrat and he knows it.
I’m for wearing masks and I’m especially for private property and business owners having the right to require masks and refuse service to those that won’t. But this opinion does nothing at all to make Bill Crawford any less full of sh__!
KF, there’s nothing racist in this post and to make sure you have no excuse there’s no bad language (even though you allow it regularly) and we all know Crawford is your bud - but if you censor this post like have many of the others that countered his falsehoods, then you’re no better than he is.
If the masks most wear actually reduced infection from airborne illnesses, this post would make a good point. Since they don't, however, my liberty to go in public without a mask has no impact on your life.
There are too many experts.
KF, I'm embarrassed that you would post this level of drivel.
July 18, 2021 at 12:37 PM; all due respect, but i'm calling bullshit on this one. LA county doesn't care and is requiring masks when indoors, vaccinated or not. vaccinations are not going to make the masks go away, because now we have the new delta variant, late this year or next year there may be another variant. this variant, that variant, this strain, that strain. and on and on and on..... just like the flu, except this one was created by man, and somehow got out.
Never wore a mask and not going to get the jab. You terrified bleeding heard libs can all go to hell. I am a free man.
@5:42
There for a second I thought health care decisions were merely health care decisions. Now I understand. Quitting smoking got me started on the road to the world-wide communist conspiracy. Then I gave up dipping. By and by I got my BMI down a bit. I was veering farther and farther to the left. Before long I sold my Harley. I'd become a leftist and I didn't even know it. Then, like a fool, I listened to Faucci and wore a mask. The next step was getting the bad bad shot. Now I'm a "bleeding heard lib" and I didn't even know it. ("bleeding heard" is even worse than bleeding heart)
Now I understand. The "vaccine" really contained a microchip that migrated to my brain and falsely convinced me that my rebel flag tattoo is embarrassing. How I long for the days of strutting around the Walmart parking lot with my "black rifle" and red cap.
Please sir, just this once, may I feel your muscle? Oh, big strong free man. Puleeze!
Drink your carrot juice and hush.
I don't mind wearing a mask when I go to the doctor.
I also don't mind choosing not to shop in a private business that requires them.
I got the shot.
I am not mad at the folks who didn't.
Because "I" am only in charge of me.
The rest of you can do as you please, and it wont anger me.
I highly recommend the rage-filled Karens on both sides give this way of life a try.
July 17, 2021, The Telegraph, Dr. Colin Axon, UK SAGE advisor opines...masks are a 'comfort blanket' that do little to curb COVID spread. (They do work well for a mass occult initiation into the New Age. Like U.N.'s David Spangler informs us "No one will enter the New Age without making a pledge to worhip Lucifer...no one will enter the New Age without taking a Luciferic initiation")
let me be very clear people.
Cloth masks, bandanas, etc are WORTHLESS. OK?
N95 masks or better actually do something.
So it's interesting and sad to me to see everyone clamoring on about whether to use a surgical mask or not.
If you want to protect yourself then get vaccinated. If you don't feel that's for you then wear a N95 mask in appropriate settings ( not while driving alone in your car !).
BUT PLEASE NOTE THAT A CLOTH MASK OFFERS YOU NEXT TO ZERO PROTECTION.
It's a virtue signaling marker only.
(Yes I'm a practicing medical doctor)
"BUT PLEASE NOTE THAT A CLOTH MASK OFFERS YOU NEXT TO ZERO PROTECTION.
It's a virtue signaling marker only.
(Yes I'm a practicing medical doctor)"
I guess this is why it's called "practicing," at least for some.
While it is true that testing shows that "bandanas" do little and the "balaclava"/"neck gaiter"/"face covering" things may actually be worse than nothing, "surgical"-type masks, either actual factory-made masks or homemade of appropriate materials, do help stop the transmission of COVID. While it is true that "surgical" masks are primarily to keep the wearer from contaminating others (in a surgical environment, the patient - that's why team members wear them, not the patient), that does help stop transmission of COVID. But even with that, such masks do offer some degree of protection to the wearer as well. As a side note, if the wearer does not know how to put on and take off a mask, that can reduce the protection for the wearer if a contaminated mask is improperly doffed, but that mask still protected those in proximity to a masked, infected person. This isn't new information.
To the "practicing medical doctor" and everyone else: ask yourself this - if surgical masks were nothing more than virtue signalling markers, why has the entirety of surgical staff (the surgeon(s) and support team in an operating room) been wearing them for decades? The one thing the practicing doctor is correct about is that non-valved "N95" masks are more effective protection for both the wearer and those nearby - BUT - that does not translate into "surgical" masks being ineffective in preventing the spread of COVID.
That said, the nonsensical effectiveness question probably won't matter because at the current infection and hospitalization rate climb due the foolish refusal of so many to get vaccinated, which will - WILL, not "may" - lead to mutations further away from the "original" COVID, Delta, etc., mask mandates and worse will likely be necessary again. Whether or not governmental mandates are reissued, many businesses and especially large companies that cater to the public (Walmart, Target, etc.) will likely restart masks for all patrons. If there is another wave anything like the last, it wouldn't surprise me to see even more stringent federal action.
@4:48.....The founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum writes "the Great Reset will result in the fusion of your physical, digital and biological identities....change the definition of what it means to be human". Maybe check out these largely DARPA/Gates funded corporations...Profusa, Inc, Galvani Bioelectronics, Frequency Therapeutics...Im sure your already familiar with Neuralink. Also, it isnt necessary to put a "chip" into you....DARPA contracted with Profusa to create syringe-injectible "hydrogel" and mRNA technology can program you to produce, at the cellular level, a "magneto protein" which has already been successfully used to "control behavior"....or you can scoff and giggle and all that fun stuff. It's up to you.
@10:56
Thank goodness somebody has come up with a way to control my behavior. I've been trying for 76 years and some few months. With very poor results.
Until then, I'm scoffing and giggling -- which is more than the six or so dead sure-enough COVID victims I knew close enough to call "friends" can do. I say "or so," b/c I don't really know if it was the dread COVID or something else that actually killed them. Their families believe their diagnoses. COVID. I'm old and I'm miserable most of the time. But sometimes I get to do tricks for my grandkids or write smartass commentary on the internet and for right now beats being dead.
As for Bill Gates. I admit he's plenty creepy and if he actually serviced Melinda he ought to have to register as a sex offender. And he's rich. But he ain't that smart.
Just released ..............60 % of THE VARIANT sufferers are vaxxed !! This thing is a damn placebo at best.........meat tenderizer for Aliens at worst.
Someone on this particular comment board has broken my bullshit meter. Would the offending poster please step forward?
I can say this from direct personal knowledge, but it isn't anything secret or special in the least because lots and lots (hundreds at least, thousands more than likely) of other people can tell you the same exact thing:
Bill Gates does not have any way - ANY way - to control behavior, his own or anyone else's. Not even in public. I have zero doubt that he wishes desperately that he did and when Melinda gets through with his soon-to-be-formerly-top-5-richest ass, he will certainly greatly regret that he didn't find a way, but nope. As exhibit #2 - Steve Ballmer. QED, EOD, period, full-stop.
"Someone on this particular comment board has broken my bullshit meter."
Stop buying your measuring devices from the clearance section at Harbor Freight. Or get offline.
Ton of MS folks went to Omaha, didn’t wear a mask the entire time and I personally don’t know a soul who got COVID afterwards. Maybe baseball fans are statistically unaffected???
I appreciate you stepping forward. I have an enormous amount of respect for people with integrity.
No, this was not one of those cheap foreign made meters. This was a genuine USDA approved made in the USA, meter. It was broken in by someone reading from the New York Times. It was tuned by the sound of Dan Rather giving overseas news reports from the early 60s. I tell you, this meter had been tested to the max. It was set before a recorded loop of Bill Clinton denying having sex with Monica Lewinsky, and it never faltered. I am sad to say it met its match on this board. I have a sad.
It is being reported that a particular person has come out in support of being vaccinated. Granted, most folks down around these parts think she is a suspected Chinese agent, well-known Commie radical (who probably slept with Bill Gates), and voted for Bernie, Hillary, and Biden at least four times in each election. Southerners in general have been suspicious of her for years and wouldn't go anywhere near any of business ventures, which they suspect are nothing more than Cuban-Russian commie socialist indoctrination centers built and secretly owned by the Chinese (or some cabal of pedophiles). Her name? Well, let's the radicals at the NYT give an opinion:
www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/opinion/tennessee-dolly-parton-covid-vaccine.html
OK, look, if someone with THAT lung capacity is at least worried enough to get vaccinated, shouldn't you guys sporting double and triple Ds under the fishin' shirts at least consider it?
"It was broken in by someone reading from the New York Times."
Uh-oh. If the Kingster vets my latest earnest submission, this won't end well...
It will end the same way everything else does. When all is said and done, all will be said and done.
China just told the world they're all set to nuke Japan into oblivion for even looking the wrong way. Their C19 attack worked as a test attack to see how weak/strong world populations are. Now they know for sure - with far too many American men pretty much being a bunch of Nancys and Marys today, China will rule the planet in short order.
Viruses are old news, especially ones with a 98.9% chance of surviving....so if you're afraid of getting sick, then you shouldn't go outside ever again.
Facci told Rand Paul today, that he didn’t know what he was talking about. The same can be said for most of the anti Vaxers posting here. Hell even Sean said it, get the shot and you live.
And Paul read the evidence to Fauci, which only continued to prove Fauci is a lying bureaucrat.
"conservative oppression" is a new one for me. Mind clarifying that one a bit?
Wearing TWO cloth masks is like building TWO chain link fences to keep the mosquitoes out of your yard.
Understand the cloth mask thing now?
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