I just wanted to point out that some of the worst parts of the Patriot Act are no longer legal. Just this year many sections were not renewed, including parts specific to surveillance.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/yes-section-215-expire...
Restricting religious practice or the right to assembly are not principles we should cede.
I'm uncertain if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
On one hand it could try new things and revert them if they don't work, and prevent temporary necessities from lingering.
On the other hand, it could also be used to pass truly terrible laws under the guise of impermanence.
I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain it but when people take risks, like that large wedding that infected dozens of people, it later kills people who didn’t even attend.
doesn’t personal freedom end when the effects aren’t personal?
Given that the government has such a terrible track record on giving up power and a decidedly mixed track record of delivery of promised/hoped for benefits, plenty of people could reasonably prefer to protect a century of liberty.
There is a chance you could hit and kill someone in a car accident next time you go out. Should you have stayed home to avoid that risk? In any situation with risk involved there will always be stories like the wedding mentioned. The point is that people should be free to take on as much or as little amount of risk as they want. If you have compromised health or a very low tolerance for risk maybe you should make the decision to avoid people as much as possible, wear a mask, work from home, etc.
Meanwhile I should have to potentially quit my job, or not get groceries, live apart from parents, or wife, so I can avoid coming into contact with your selfish choices, indirectly.
allrighty then.
1. If I did get it I would self quarantine. Not go out and ‘spew’ it. I wear my mask when appropriate, I socially distance, and I only go out when I need to.
2. I never said I want to go out to a bar. I want to visit my family and let them see my newborn daughter. I want my niece and nephew to have social interactions and a real education. I want to be able to conduct my business so I can feed my family.
3. Lockdowns and quarantines have already cost many, many people their jobs, time with family, time we’ll never get back, and it has even killed people. With current approaches everyone suffers instead regardless of their situation.
It's easy to see how if there is attention and power that comes with a big enough crisis, everything suddenly gets framed as such a crisis (see rights violations, climate crisis, war on drugs, bullying, etc.) So you better hope that whoever gets to exercise absolute power in the case of a crisis is on your side and shares your values.
Those who trade liberty for security get neither as the saying goes. But I think the above is well understood, and I guess rejected by some, because I see so many positions that think giving away our freedom is ok.
What we really need are stronger politicians who can unite people and find compromises between freedom and public health measures, that help us collectively move forward. This crisis has shown how weak politicians have become (and how horribly technocrats and corporates have been at filling that void). Leadership is not forcing people to do stuff, that only makes society more divided and undermines attempts to solve problems. We need leadership and we don't have it.
They went from a "second wave" of over 700 new cases a day, to just having hit 16 consecutive days of zero new cases - all due to lockdown restrictions and mask wearing.
It was tough on people. But it worked.
Looking at numbers like 160,000 new cases a day is horrifying. Death rates seem to be globally hovering right around 0.5% - that's a lot of dead people...
Here in the US we tend to irrevocably lose a bit of independence and freedom in every crisis -- and it's often lost forever.
Wars tends to be the best fig leaf for eroding our civil liberties. Things like the Patriot Act get passed after 9/11 and are still with us today. The authorization for war given to Bush in 2001 is still active today, several presidents later, and has been used to kill and torture people in a whole host of countries. Figurative "wars" have resulted in erosion of rights - like the war on drugs - which gave us expanded civil asset forfeiture.
Covid-19 has given the governors a pass to do anything they like with little to no oversight. Banning any gathering of people is totally fine apparently. It's also seemingly fine to only use it against gatherings that are opposed to your political objectives, while those that you support are given a pass. Banning the expression of one's religion is also ok. (In my state all places of worship were forced closed, no matter what precautions they took, but vape stores were deemed essential businesses. I'm an atheist but this even bothered me.)
Maybe this is all perfect reasonable given the crisis -- but once these newfound powers are let out of the bag, we often find that they're hard to pull back.