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American Liberty Is Not a Disease
Bill Murray as Bob Wiley in What About Bob?
In the days and weeks following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, Americans faced a choice: we could cower in fear, hoping a prostrate position would appease our enemies, or we could fight. We fought. Nearly twenty years later, we find ourselves under attack and again at a crossroads. But now in the wake of the coronavirus, many Americans have lost their will to fight. People who once defied fear by stepping boldly out in their neighborhoods, going back to work and school, joining the military, and cheering hometown sports teams in huge arenas and ballparks despite continued threat of attack are now calling the police on neighbors playing at the community park. We have decided that living in fear is the new normal. The government and the media convinced us that safety at all costs is a righteous substitute for freedom. They couldn’t be more wrong.
Freedom doesn’t come without accepting a certain level of risk. If you think government can eliminate risk, you aren’t living free. For example, conservatives have long fought against both liberals in the media and Democrats holding political office who try to convince us to forsake our Second Amendment rights for public safety. Gun ownership comes with risks. Accidents happen and lives are lost to violence and suicide. Yet the moment we give in to anti-gun activists’ demands is the moment we lose our right to defend ourselves. The gun debate is one battle in the ongoing war for the soul of America and the outcome will determine in whom power resides, the government or We the People. The coronavirus is just the current battle.
Easter weekend was a breaking point. Reports of parishioners being fined for gathering in church parking lots in their own cars; a father in Colorado handcuffed in front of his daughter for playing a game of catch in a park; local authorities encouraging citizens to report their neighbors for violating social distancing rules. In Raleigh, NC, police were called to a group protesting the government shutdown. Raleigh PD stated the demonstrators were in violation of the Governor’s Executive Order against group activities, and that protesting was a non-essential activity. I wonder how the White House Press Corps would react if President Trump declared their reporting a non-essential activity? I’m certain the First Amendment would get the bold-type treatment in the pages of the New York Times and on CNN.
Tyranny falls in and out of favor depending on the tyrant.
The pandemic stopped being about concern for human life as soon as it was seen as a weapon in the Blue versus Red political war. More broadly – and alarming – the threat of the virus is a tool to peddle fear in a country in which emotion can override rational thought and deliberation. Most of the news outlets report with a forked tongue, declaring themselves gatekeepers of truth while they expose their bias by slanting coverage against any efforts that challenge their anti-Trump narrative, including parroting Chinese state propaganda. This situation provides the perfect convergence of mass panic and hysteria with a government intervention that promises safety and survival. But it comes with a price. All we have to do is give in to the fear – and we see it with every steep curve in the chart, with every projected death count, with every heart-wrenching story of separation and death, and now with every warning of a potential “second wave” outbreak if the country ends quarantine too soon. I see the terror in the eyes of the customers who shop at my pet store. They are afraid of everything, even their neighbors and coworkers. Most have been convinced their paralyzing fear can only be cured by living life according to the diktat of the government, and seeing to it everyone else does, too.
We should have learned the lessons from 9/11 that the government cannot guarantee our safety no matter how many liberties we surrender, and also that fear of the fight will defeat us faster than any enemy, human or not. The threat of failure is enough for some to submit to a government that will control every aspect of life.
There is a Bill Murray movie called What About Bob? in which Mr. Murray plays the title character Bob Wiley: a neurotic man mentally dependent on his psychotherapist. Bob believes he can’t live in the world outside his apartment without the close attention of his doctor. (Spoiler Alert) Bob is cured by learning he can live independently only after he realizes life naturally comes with risks. We are becoming a nation of Bobs. Our cure is accepting that American liberty isn’t a disease and the cure is a coddling government. The cure is in an acceptance of risk as the cost of freedom.
We cannot let a political class convince us to relinquish our God-given rights in the name of security. It is the only sure path to lives of captivity. I don’t care who is in city, state, or federal office, nor whether he has an R or D behind his name. Unchallenged power in the hands of authority is an addictive drug; the only cure is to put it back in the hands of the people. It’s a risky proposition, and there are no guarantees of blue skies and rainbows on every day’s horizon, but freedom is the one thing worth that cost.
Published in General
Well said. Right now I think government is a greater threat than the virus.
All of life is a gamble. I’m (personally) willing to roll the dice. I would not knowingly or capriciously infect others, but I would rather go about my business conscientiously and considerately. In theory, that’s how all of us operate normally: We drive in our lane; we obey traffic signals; we don’t smoke in nonsmoking establishments. I think there are prudent measures that most people could be persuaded to adopt to be able to function without massive shutdowns and layoffs.
Sigh. If only George III could have successfully slid this idea past the revolting colonists and their leaders, the last two-and-a-half centuries of world history would have been written very differently . . .
Ha! Somehow I doubt the Revolutionaries wouldn’t fall for it. Then again there wasn’t a CNN to act as court jesters, either…
I can only guess Trump saw his political life flash before his eyes as the “what if’s” were being thrown around the war room early on. As he does so well, he will own his decision and he will likely win re-election with my vote included in his tally.
The list of permanent damages to the country is too long for a comment, but my two worries du jour:
– As long as lives can can saved, liberty can be taken (or handed over?). Environmental crises comes to mind.
– The old, smelly boots of our fathers that we step into to fight the dirty battles have no willing feet to fill them.
The leader of the deplorables is now the king declaring “cower in your homes.” For our future or his?
As long as our Betters can claim these draconian measures will save just one life, they consider it justified and will use it for any future situation they deem a national emergency-or in the “public interest”.
Well said, @ElGuapo. Baby steps to tyranny.
I am tired of this being called the ‘new normal’ and I have started telling people so, including the liberals I work with in the school system. There is nothing normal about this – it an aberration that has taken away my right to exercise my religion, my right to free assembly, and my right to privacy. Yes, it is a new reality, but it is not normal, nor should it become normal.
Thank you for this! I agree. It’s not going to be my normal, and the more I talk about it with my friends and neighbors (which ‘stay at home’ naturally discourages) the more I meet people who think the same.
Oh yeah – Juliana is exactly right on this.
I think we “normies” need to stick together.