I’ll preface this blog by saying I don’t really believe all of what I’ve written, below. But I want to lay it out to see if any of it makes any sense to me or to others. Oops, it DOES make sense to others – otherwise we wouldn’t be losing our liberties.
So here goes…
You’ve all heard the expression, attributed to good ol’ Ben:
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
Oh, contraire – we wisely and gladly give up our “freedoms” and “liberties” for lots and lots of things. Here are a few:
- The freedom to drive 90 mph in residential neighborhoods
- The freedom to store 500 gallons of gasoline in our suburban garage
- The freedom to punch out the guy who just insulted your wife
- The freedom to jump in front of a bullet train
- The freedom to jump out of a plane at 10,000 feet without a parachute
You get the point. There are lots of freedoms we give up based on what we call “common sense.” In fact, every one of the millions of laws in the United States (over 30,000 federal laws times 50 states times local and country laws) take away one or more of our liberties.
So, where do we draw the line on what liberties we don’t argue about giving up?
How about the really dumb laws, like the one in Montgomery, AL, where it’s illegal to open an umbrella on a street because it might scare the horses.
How about voting without having to show ID? Why should we have to show ID to vote? OMG, that takes away “freedoms” from a lot of people – the freedom about not being saddled with having to show an ID. And so does having to have ID for driving and having a concealed weapon and flying on a plane and crossing the border into another country.
That brings up the topic of the freedom of crossing the border into another country. Why shouldn’t Mexicans and Guatemalans, and Iranians, and Islamic Jihadis have to lose their liberties to cross the Rio Grande into the United States? That is so unfair – requiring them to give up their liberties just to cross a stinkin’ river.
How about the COVID jab or mask mandates? Should we have the liberty of refusing to do either, refusing the jab and refusing the mask? How about the liberty of parents to determine if their child will wear a mask at school – even if he already had COVID or the jab? The public schools (the “government”) has the right to take away the liberties of parents to keep their kids maskless in school, just as they have a right to implement a dress code. Dang, we lost our liberties again.
The cartoon at below could refer to the “terrorist” of COVID just as easily. That’s Fauci peering through the doorway.
This all boils down to the “greater good” argument. At what point is the loss of some small part of our liberties justified by the “greater good?” Who do we trust to determine the greater good, and how is it determined – what is it based on? Even “science” and “the scientific method” cannot always be relied upon to determine whether an action furthers “the greater good.” See this article about the perversion and tyranny of science. Too often reliance on the very narrow perspective and often faulty perspective of science ignores the bigger picture. The “bigger picture” involves what the science of the moment ignores: Emotional health, the economy, destroying businesses, taking away jobs, loss of income, and gradual cultural adaptation to ill-conceived authoritarian rule.
So, I guess my takeaway from all of these examples is that taking Ben’s admonition at face value and applying it to everything at all times is foolish. There are too many exceptions for it to remain a universal truth.
Question everything.
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