It’s Day 246 of The First Ohio Shutdown, Day Six of DeWine’s Holiday Hammer and Day 182 of The Last Thing America Needs.
Deb and I are well. Today we devoted some time to Ernie, uncovering a few issues we judge to be minor, and we did a bit of shopping. We conducted much of that commerce via now-common “curbside pickup” — order items online or through an app, wait for confirmation, park in a designated spot and wait for the purchases to be brought to us.
It’s convenient as hell, skirts all that mandatory-masks and stand-on-the-X stuff, and makes a person wonder how poor folk live. We’ve even had our groceries delivered to the house. Been doing that for months now.
An added bonus is that it removes the temptation to buy a pile of candy at checkout.
As Deb observed this afternoon, this is a part of “pandemic theater” that should stick around after the “crisis” subsides.
If you’ve been paying close attention over the last 245 days, you know where I stand — on Liberty, unequivocally and unapologetically. Thing is, Liberty doesn’t dictate a course of action, but rather puts the onus on the individual to choose and to act.
I don’t need to tell you that present-day America is a minefield of decrees, orders and regulations that seek to undermine individual Liberty. And so we resist — not in a simple-minded or reflexively oppositional way, but as born-free Americans who keep our own counsel and chart our own course.
It’s the difference between libertarian and contrarian. It’s what separates a free-thinking man from a rebellious teenager.
The distinction is so fundamental, and yet — and yet — there are people who still don’t grasp it. In The Law, Frédéric Bastiat wrote about a similar misunderstanding:
“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
(The Law belongs on every Patriot’s bookshelf, by the way.)
The invention, by others, of hypocrisy where is doesn’t exist, is something that lovers of Liberty simply will have to bear.
I’ve closed each and every one of my daily posts with the benediction, “Take care of yourselves.” Those four words are meant to convey free thought and independent action, self-interest and even selfishness — do what you choose to do, not what the State mandates or what others demand.
Don’t comply with a rule merely because it’s a rule. Don’t conform for conformity’s sake. Don’t go along just to get along. See, reason, act.
Reason.
That is — or can be — a ticket to accusations of hypocrisy. It’s also the very definition of resistance.
I can live with that.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath
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