Walrus
Oppressed White Male
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2008
- Messages
- 11,166
This sort of sense of entitlement is more the issue for me. Some people have such an exaggerated sense of self-importance that they put their own "essential freedoms" above the safety of those around them. Its equivalent to the whole "Ronaldo is a slave at United" nonsense. Sometimes sacrifice is required to maintain the freedoms and quality of life that people (in the UK) enjoy in this modern age. Im in my 30's so have never experienced anything like the World Wars - this is pretty much the most extreme national disaster to take place in my lifetime so far. I think a lot of people of my generation and those around dont realise how lucky they have been to live in what has been largely a time of stability and peace for the world, and they dont understand or appreciate that sometimes life has hardships that we must endure.I'm surprised and terrified that people are so willing to give up their essential freedoms because they're a little scared. If someone would have asked me in January how deadly a pandemic would have to be for people to be as willing as they currently collectively are to give up their freedoms I'd have said at least 10x more deadly overall and around 50x more deadly for those under 60.
As someone concerned about the progressive erosion of civil liberties (which is always under the guise of keeping the populace safety) the enthusiasm with which we're gifted our basic rights to government for a bit of purported safety is far more concerning that the virus itself. I've no doubt future governments will look at how quickly we were willing to sacrifice these freedoms and use it as a blueprint.
Literally in this thread less than 48 hours ago a video was posted of someone alone on a park bench in a communal space with no-one within 50 metres of them with close to zero chance for infecting anyone else. Several police officers who were not themselves following social distancing guidelines arrested them without being able to quote the legislation for which they were relying. If that in and of itself wasn't frightening enough, rather than protests regarding a clear abuse of police powers, we have people criticising that the person even had the right to sit on the bench in the first place. We've joyfully sleepwalked into 1984.
The idea that this is a "slippery slope" to some sort of totalitarian police state is a nonsense in my view. Admittedly I have very little faith in the general public (especially after the last 5 years or so), but I remain confident that there are some fairly basic red lines where the populace will collectively tell the gov't to feck off. The current situation isnt one of them - its about a new virus, which is still mostly unknown, which has spread around the world and is killing thousands of people. It is an impossible balance to try to find, to protect the public safety whilst also trying to minimise the long term damage to the economy, but its definitely a bit early to be pining over lost personal freedoms.
For what its worth, I mostly identify as a libertarian, too.