Tag Archives: freedom

The great unmasking…

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Thanks to Texas and a bunch of deep red states deciding that government-imposed mask mandates are no longer required as part of the response to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the question “When should we stop masking?” is an apt one. Everyone has an opinion. This happens to be mine…

In general, I’m mostly opposed to broad, sweeping government mandates made under the guise that “we know best.” Then again, I’m also philosophically opposed to assuming I know more than people who have spent a lifetime studying virology. That said, the imposition of masking in public hasn’t felt like a grave threat to my personal liberty. I’d be hard pressed to devise an argument that wearing a bit of cloth in an effort to prevent the transmission of a deadly and previously unknown virus somehow violates any right protected by the Constitution. Most of the positions staked out by people who have made such an assertion, sound more like teenaged whining than well-reasoned logic.

A fair number of people who aren’t part of the small, but loud “I won’t wear a face diaper” contingent, are fairly reasonable. Their response to questions of when does it stop is often “not yet” or when recommended by the CDC or other competent medical authority. There are a few, the true pro-mask outliers, who want to keep their masks on forever. 

When I can’t avoid being indoors in close proximity to others, I’ll keep mine on for now. Yes, even after being fully vaccinated… though in all honestly, I suspect I’ll subconsciously be less vigilant once my relative risk of slow, breathless death is dramatically reduced. I probably shouldn’t admit that in writing, but I’ve always found self-interest to be more motivating than vague notions of “the common good.” 

The real line in the sand for me will be about two or three weeks after we’ve reached the point where everyone who wants a vaccination can get one. That’s the moment, were, in my mind, masks in public places become purely optional and where mine will likely fall away unless there’s compelling evidence to the contrary.

Yes, there are going to be those out there who steadfastly refuse both masks and vaccinations. Frankly, I don’t feel any sense of moral obligation to continue protecting them when they’ve opted not to help themselves when help is readily available. They’ve made their choices, so on their head be it.

Choice, vice, and the Protestant ethic for the 21st century…

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Note: The following is loosely based on a recent conversation and nicely sums up what’s probably at the core of my life philosophy. It has been sanitized for your protection, or ribbed for your pleasure, or whatever…

Look, if you want to kill yourself, have at it. You want to whore yourself out? Go forth and do great things. Want to chase that high six times a day? You do you, kiddo. Want to escape from the world and go live in the woods or under a bridge somewhere? Help yourself. I don’t have any business telling you how to live – or rather it isn’t my business right up until how you want to live starts having an out-sized impact on those around you who are just trying to live their lives too.

You see, the thing is, I don’t really care about what are commonly called “vice” crimes. Drugs, gambling, prostitution – the old classics. As long as everyone involved is a consenting adult, why the hell do I care what they choose to do with or to themselves? Experience tells me that trying to save someone from themselves is almost the textbook definition of a losing proposition. I’m fully prepared to let people go on drinking and drugging and whoring and gambling to their heart’s content if that’s what they want to do.

Here’s the catch. When their decisions start interfering with other people who are just out in the world trying to do their own thing, I’m perfectly willing to see society crash down on them like the clenched fist of any angry god. When they start killing and thieving and generally making civilized life impossible for others, my level of sympathy with their “plight” drops to damned near zero.

When the drunk climbs behind the wheel or the addict breaks into a home or the gambler starts embezzling from their employer, I cheerfully advocate a policy of zero tolerance and swift, harsh retribution. In life you make your choices and the consequences should naturally follow. It’s not my job to shelter you from those consequences. It’s not society’s job to pick up the tab and bail people out because they’ve made shit decisions.

Some people call me misanthropic. They’re not wrong. Based on a lifetime of observation, I like to think my general misanthropy comes from a place of reason. Couple that with a firm belief in self-determination across all circumstances, and well, there’s a pretty high risk of sounding like an asshole. Of course just because you sound like an asshole doesn’t mean you’re wrong.
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I feel like I’m on to something here. Do the work. Be responsible for yourself. Basic guidelines for life not spent as a complete and utter drain on society. Maybe I’ve stumbled upon the Modified Protestant Ethic for the 21st Century.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Overestimation. As much as I appreciate your belief that a good word from me is a powerful totem for overcoming organizational obstacles, I regretfully must inform you that you have profoundly overestimated my ability to command change in a chaotic world. I appreciate your vote of confidence, but if my serving as the voice of reason is your last best hope, I think it’s best for all of us if you plan now on crushing disappointment. Rest assured that my pleas fall on the same deaf ears as yours.

2. New (old) routine. It took me exactly three days to fall into a new routine of doing whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. Landing back in the office after almost a week of that kind of decadent behavior has proven to be a hard pill to swallow. Sure, it’s just the old routine back again, but after a brief hint of freedom I can’t help but resent the confining structure just a little bit more than usual. Fortunately it will only take a few weeks of grinding monotony to reset my expectations based on this new (old) routine.

3. Pollen. The weather these last two days has been ideal for top down driving. The airborne pollen that hits you like a physical wall, however, makes it prohibitively agonizing to avail myself of the opportunity. Sure, some people who are more strongly constituted or may just be willing to endure scratchy, bloodshot eyes and the inability to breath through their nose, are out there soaking up the sun. Me? Not so much. Real summer will be here soon-ish. Then I can really enjoy the ride. Sadly, though, I want to be topless now.

What’s changed?

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The great debate over the virtue of the Second Amendment rages today as loudly as ever. Both sides scream past each other, fearing that giving an inch of ground will inexorably lead to the tide running hard against them.

There have been firearms in the United States since before we were the United States. The first colonists to wade ashore in Jamestown brought ball and powder in equal parts to hunt on and defend the new world they intended to carve out of the American wilderness.

What you don’t hear about them doing is walking into a tavern or church and taking a pot shot at their neighbors. I’ve not done an exhaustive study on the topic, but I can’t think of a large number of historical example of what we’d commonly call random acts of “mass violence” in schools, businesses, and public places until the latter half of the last century. I have no doubt they happened, what with humans being a particularly violence prone species and all, but a quick look doesn’t point to seeing it happen with particularly great frequency.

So my question, then, is what’s changed? What makes the average American in 2015 more likely to walk into a church to unload both proverbial barrels than his counterpart in 1815 or 1915? Access to firearms isn’t a satisfactory answer. If anything, a gun was easier to get throughout most of American history than they are today. They hung on the mantle, were propped in the corner, or lived in bedside tables without benefit of trigger locks or gun safes. I’m old enough to remember a time when a rifle behind a truck’s bench seat in the school parking lot meant that hunting season was open, not that one of the students (or the teachers) was plotting mayhem and chaos.

What’s changed? Are we intrinsically worse human beings than our predecessors? Are we less able to judge the relationship between action and consequence? Or do we just tend more towards being batshit crazy than our saintly ancestors?

Hello Caitlyn…

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Half my friends and family are probably appalled that the olympian formerly known as Bruce Jenner is now called Caitlyn. Abomination in the eyes of God, blah, blah, blah. The other half of my friends are celebrating Caitlyn as a hero for the 21st century. Such bravery in the face of certain criticism and hate, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Color me ambivalent. Disinterested. Nonplussed. If Bruce wants to be Caitlyn, as in all things that don’t infringe on the free exercise of my liberty, I say God bless and have a good life. It’s a short one – far too short to go about wringing your hands and gnashing your teeth because someone somewhere doesn’t live their lives the way you think they should.

Don’t like pornography? Don’t look at it. Don’t like gay marriage? Don’t have one. Don’t like booze? Don’t drink. Don’t like the way someone is talking to God? Don’t listen. Don’t like that Caitlyn Jenner is on the cover of a magazine? Don’t look. No one is forcing a damned thing down your throat. You’re free to take it or leave it – but when you fixate on it, when it becomes an all consuming irritant in your life, when you want to cram everyone else on the planet into your narrow minded mold, don’t be surprised when I think you’re a crate of AK-47s away from being the damned Taliban.

Go live your life. Let other people live theirs. Put on a dress. Put on a track suit. Get out there and allow your friends and neighbors to enjoy the same freedom of conscience you expect them to give you. You’ll save yourself a lot of angst and anguish that way.

Not a sermon, just a thought.

Kevin Bacon or: The Everlasting Know-It-All…

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I find myself in the incredibly awkward position of agreeing with the United Nations, Germany, France, and Brazil all at the same time. Just writing that sentence makes me feel vaguely dirty on the inside. Still, it seems to be a fact of life these days. It’s not that I mind our government spying on other countries. I actively encourage it. Mostly, I’m simply Seperationembarrassed at the ham handed way our country seems to be handling its clandestine affairs. At this point, I really think job should be to get themselves off the front page of every newspaper in the world expeditiously as possible.

While I’m more than happy to let the boys at Ft. Meade do some quiet spying across the ocean seas, I want to make it perfectly clear that I don’t think that my government has the right to listen in on my phone calls, or read my email, or track my location just because in some Kevin Bacon-esq way, my latest tweet could be six degrees separated from the local Elkton Al Qaeda cell. Frankly, I think I’d rather take my chances with the terrorists than with the Everlasting Know-It-All that our government seems bound and determined to become. An American citizen shouldn’t have to sacrifice essential liberty for the convenience of the government simply because it’s easy to point the big ear inwards and suck up every available byte of data. If the American government wants to spy on Americans, it should be hard. It should be damned hard. I won’t make any apologies for my lack of interest in making it easy for the NSA, or CIA, or any of the other three letter agencies out there.

When it comes right down to it, I’ll trade being a little less safe for being a little more free every single time. After all, it’s hard to be overly afraid of the terrorists when our own government is spending an outsized amount of time watching us, listening to us, kicking in the doors of those who dissent, and generally acting like a bunch of terrorists and thugs themselves.

The nightmare scenario…

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Here in ‘Murica, we have a tendency to think in terms of big disasters: earthquakes, hurricanes, pandemic flu, and briefcase nukes. Those are the kind of events that get big attention and the corresponding big dollars poured into planning what to do when one of those things happens. For years, the nightmare scenario has been a hurricane slamming into the Big Easy (been there, done that), a mid-west earthquake that cripples transportation across swath of the country from Chicago to Memphis, or a non-descript dirty bomb left at Union Station our outside the Smithsonian. Those are still the official nightmare scenarios, but they’re not my personal nightmare.

Compared to radiological bombs and the weather, my personal nightmare is decidedly low tech. It’s ten suicide bombers in ten separate cities walking into ten coffee shops at 8:30 in the morning of a random Tuesday and blowing themselves to hell. It’s the kind of improvised devices we saw in Boston – easy enough that just about anyone can manufacture one with stuff they already have around the house. It’s not the kind of terror that’s going to bring down entire buildings, but let them start going off in shopping malls and restaurants across downtown America, and watch how fast the public clamors for something, anything that ratchets down the body count. How long would it be before we nationally agree to be searched at any time for any reason or to having our cars inspected before being allowed into a parking garage or to give up any number of our essential freedoms?

Suicide bombs and improvised explosives have become a way of life in places like Israel, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Adopting a bunker mentality when you spend every day under threat is a perfectly natural response to those outside forces acting on you, but I don’t want that for America. I don’t want to live in a garrison town where I’ve traded a lot of personal freedom for a nominal amount of safety. That’s my real nightmare scenario and one that we can only avoid through eternal vigilance. That’s the price we’re going to have to pay – the price we’ve always paid – for liberty.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The phrase “Assault Weapon.” The variants of the AR-15 and AK-47 that are commonly available on the civilian market are not “assault” rifles, regardless of what people call them. Real assault rifles (read the type of rifle generally used by the military), are capable of fully automatic fire, meaning that when the trigger is held down, the gun fires until the magazine is empty or the receiver jams. A semi-automatic in the AR- style (or any other style for that matter) requires a trigger squeeze for each round to fire. An alarming number of people seem to be under the misguided impression that just because a gun is based on a military design, it’s a military gun. I’d almost have more respect for the ban supporters if they’d come right out and say that they want to ban military-looking semi-auto rifles“ because even though they don’t know a carbine from a catamaran, those AR’s are just scary looking… As if the gun knows the difference between a walnut stock and a “scary” looking black carbon body. Oh, and one more thing. Please, for the love of God, please stop calling them “machine guns”. It’s embarrassing for everyone.

2. Anyone who has ever argued a variant of “the Second Amendment only covers muskets.” Assuming for a moment that the Constitution and Bill of Rights only apply to items in existence at the time of adoption in 1789, by extension we’d also have to argue that the First Amendment only protects speech in the form of newspapers and standing in the town square spouting off about whatever is on your mind – forget about the internet, television, radio, and telephone. And forget about a right to privacy, the Framers didn’t even bother mentioning that in the text at all. You either have to accept that the Constitution is a living document and means what the courts say it means, or that the Constitution means what it says in plain text applicable only to the world as it was in 1789. You can’t have it both ways based on whatever select bit or piece fits your particular world view.

3. Grounds. Taking a big gulp of coffee only to end up with a mouth full of grounds ranks right up there with root canal on my list of bad things. Since it’s happened on two separate days this week, it might be time to break down and reevaluate my dependence on my long serving Mr. Coffee brewing station. Clearly this is a situation that can’t be endured much longer.

The Glorious Fourth…

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We live in troubled times. Love of country is seen as the exclusive province of the closed-minded and Patriots are derided as jingoistic bombasts. The good that America has done and continues to do in the world is swept under the rug in favor of discussions on where our steps have faltered. The long list of our national accomplishments are pushed aside and only our mistakes are held up to the light of public scrutiny.

Two hundred thirty one years ago, 55 patriots, working under conditions of secrecy and in contravention of the instructions that had brought them together, voted for independence from Great Britain. Those colonials, mistreated and abused by the king’s government, launched the world’s greatest experiment in representative democracy. We fought a great civil war to determine if such a nation could endure. In the century just passed, we fought two world wars to ensure that this legacy of freedom did not perish and a long cold war that pitted America against the forces of an evil empire. Now, America’s bravest sons and daughters stand post in places with names like Kabul and Tikrit, just as their predecessors held the line in the la Drang Valley, at the Chosin Reservoir, in the snows of Bastogne, and the muddy trenches of the Marne.

Today is Independence Day and I remain committed to the proposition that our country, warts and all, remains the last, best hope of earth; that, as it was at the beginning, it is a shining city upon a hill.