We do not have a public health crisis. We have a crisis of law and order. No one is talking about it

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.editorialboard.com/we-do-not-have-a-public-health-crisis-we-have-a-crisis-of-law-and-order-no-one-is-talking-about-it/

So, again, with feeling: Anti-vaccine GOP leaders are lawless. Their followers are often criminal. (I mean this literally.) I’m going to keep repeating myself no matter how many times they claim to be “fighting for their freedom.” I’m going to keep calling on the government to put an end to lawlessness no matter how much they hew and cry about “tyranny.” Criminals are “free” to break the law, too. Then they are found and punished. The president was right to say the unvaccinated are the problem. His mandate forces tens of millions of them to get vaccinated. They are literally robbing the rest of us of our freedom.

This is important to point out, because the discourse so far keeps framing the question as one between freedom and government, as if government and freedom were opposites. Sure, they are opposites — if you are a conservative. That the discourse is framing them as antipodes is a consequence of the last half-century being dominated by the Republican Party’s preferred ways of looking at the world. “Negative liberty,” as Isaiah Berlin put it, is only one meaning of liberty, and it is, furthermore, often the narrowest, brittlest and dumbest.

The government can violate individual freedom. When it does, its efforts must be opposed. But that doesn’t make it the opposite of freedom. Why? Because the government is us. Good or bad, right or wrong, what the government does in our name, we do to ourselves. This democratic meaning of government, and the implications for freedom inherent in it, is as complex as the multi-racial republic we live in. But conservatives dislike complexities. They complicate preferred pieties. It’s easier to think of the absence of government as the presence of freedom. That’s also easily the worst worldview in a pandemic that has killed the equivalent of more than 226 9/11’s.

The discourse is moving in the right direction. Pundits of high perch like David Leonhardt are making room for other kinds of freedom, like the freedom from a disease that’s holding back our lives, our economy and our country. As the Times columnist said recently, freedom isn’t doing whatever you want, whenever you want, consequence-free.

*snip*

[PortTack]

1. Great piece!

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. Only a sociopath would define freedom as

doing whatever you want, whenever you want, consequence-free.

[OAITW r.2.0]

3. Hammer hit squarely on the nail.

What's COVID Impact on our healthcare system?

[Nevilledog]

5. Wish we'd see more about how many healthcare workers are quitting.

[Hugin]

6. I read the most disturbing article I've seen during this whole COVID pandemic event posted yesterday

It was a report on the crisis with the funerary workers in TX.

Eye opening to say the least.

The most disturbing excerpts were the condition descriptions of the bodies arriving from the hospitals. It was the most graphic illustration of what is these people's final hours I've seen and offers secondary insights into what must be a complete horror show in the ICUs.

I seriously believe that due to health staff shortages and trauma among those who are working that about all they do is hook these people up to vents and ship them out when the monitors flatline. Best of care.

[crickets]

4. True, brilliantly stated. nt