culture / Ideas and Policy / Reblogged

You Can’t Cuck the Tuck III: Liberty in The Age of The Virus

The Portly Politico13 Comments

The Washington Post blares under its masthead that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”  That alliterative tag line for The Bezos Post is intended as a not-so-subtle jab at Donald Trump, as “democracy” for The Post and the rest of the Mainstream Media means “letting overcredentialed grad students and aloof experts run everything while ignoring the proles.”  Apparently, a businessman who has slashed federal taxes and regulations and devolved power back to the States is a would-be authoritarian.

For all its dire virtue-signalling and hand-wringing, though, The Post and its ilk are wrong:  just like the unsuspecting coeds in Midsommar, liberty dies in broad daylight.

Leave it to Tucker Carlson to diagnose the problem far more effectively than any medicine man mad with power:

In the clip above, Carlson discusses an interview with an American businessman so steeped in China’s slippery, dishonest culture that his desire for Wuhan-style lockdowns—where the Chi-Coms welded doors shut, starving people inside their apartments—went totally unremarked upon, even after he said such measures were desirable on Carlson’s show!

Apparently, nobody batted an eye at the suggestion that it might worth starving healthy citizens in order to “flatten the curve” of The Virus.  Anecdotally, I’ve spoken with friends who think that any curtailment of liberties and destruction of economic activity is worth the cost of saving a handful of lives.  They are shockingly blase about such a dire prescription, likely because they themselves (or so they presume) would not be subject to any unpleasant side effects.

These are the same folks that would balk if the government decided to crack down on marijuana sales in Colorado (which, I believe, still violate federal law) or wanted to overturn Obergefell, decrying them as “a violation of civil liberties” and the like, but think that indefinite, draconian shutdowns and arresting churchgoers is necessary to save—what?—maybe a few thousand already-sick people?

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t take The Virus seriously, or that elderly lives aren’t worth saving.  They certainly are.  But every grown-up understands the nature of trade-offs:  that the misery inflicted by an extended economic depression will far outstrip whatever misery The Virus can cause.

But even more importantly, liberty is worth preserving, even if there is a plague.  We’ve turned dancing nurses and doctors into de facto technocrats, willfully suspending basic constitutional liberties in exchange for… staying at home?

The counterargument boils down to “you can’t enjoy your liberty if you’re dead.”  What a shortsighted, foolish, arrogant bit of ass-holery.  Thousands upon thousands of Americans have sacrificed their lives to secure and maintain liberty for the rest of us to enjoy.  They did so knowing that their deaths meant that others could enjoy the fruits of liberty.

Again, I don’t want to get sick and die, nor do I want anyone else to do so.  We should certainly be mindful about washing our hands, keeping a respectful distance from folks, and cleaning thoroughly.  That’s just the respectful, kindly thing to do—we should care about other people in our society.

But there’s a world of difference between that and letting a handful of doctors displace the Constitution.  If people want to go to church, let them go to church.  If healthy individuals want to take the risk of going to work, let them work.

Somehow smoking pot and watching Netflix has become a basic human right, but freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the right to assemble peacefully have become illegal.  In a sane world, we’d put the torch to pot farms* and take the growers to church.

Thank God for the South, which continues to approach The Virus with commonsense and perspective—and with an understanding that there is more to this life than watching television and being comfortable.

H/T to Didact’s Reach for the link to Carlson’s video.

*Don’t sperg out on me, Libertarian autists; it’s what we adults call hyperbole and satire.

13 thoughts on “You Can’t Cuck the Tuck III: Liberty in The Age of The Virus”

  1. Indeed, I was just trading comments with an English friend, ostensibly about Johnson’s comments this weekend. The peaceable kingdom ain’t so much so these days – he had watched a clip of the protestors in Michigan last week and bemoaning that his ancestors had given up their weapons a century ago.

    And so once again, it comes down to America, mostly the south and the intermountain west to do as Old Abe told us:

    “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

    Or, in the words of the 1st Mississippi Infantry, “Stand Fast, Mississippians”.

    Funny part is that the man who saved the Union (besides Lincoln) was Henry Clay, If the South had left in 1850 instead of 1860 (Kansas Nebraska compromise), the Old Northwest would have followed the Old Southwest, which was its only market.

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    • I don’t mean to be inflammatory, but I can’t help but think that, at a certain point, the South and the “intermountain west” (I like that) shouldn’t be their own country. We’re two people unsteadily sharing one nation. Our group is tolerant of, but uneasy about, the other side’s values; but the other side seeks to destroy us, or to force us to bend the knee to their ideology. I just don’t see how such a situation can long endure. Of course, I’m sure they felt the same way in the 1850s.

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      • It’s the most accurate term I can think of, includes a goodly part of the Old Northwest, and the plains, from Dakota (maybe even Manitoba, to Texas, at least when I use it

        They pretty much did, I think, and the worst war in our history came of it. But many, many days, in the last few years, I completely agree, the others come down to the Union above all, but that is becoming unsustainable. Maybe, just maybe Chinese flu will be enough of a wake up call, but I wouldn’t bet even half the farm.

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      • Yes, it’s an apt term, and covers most of Red State America.

        I am certainly not desirous of war, particularly a Second American Civil War or anything of the type. But as I wrote one day last week, “something’s gotta give.” How long can intense tension endure? We’re already seeing the cracks, and the frayed psyches. Not everyone can handle such massive cognitive and social dissonance forever.

        But we shall see. A problem—often pointed out by those on our side who fear The Boogaloo is coming—is that now the divisions aren’t nearly as neatly geographically divided. It’s the countryside versus the cities in even the reddest of States. Maybe us countryside folks have the upper hand in terms of self-sufficiency and know-how (probably), but that will make any potential conflict far more complicated and costly, regardless of the currency in which the fee is paid.

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      • I know, and yet it depends on how we fight. I see it as very bloody but pretty short, once transportation and communications go down, which we can pretty easily do, now what, half starved, uniformed – sounds more like the zombie apocalypse – and maybe it is. I think at some point a good many smaller cities will be going red, but that’s mostly a guess. And what will the military do, there it’s a class thing as much as anything.

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      • Yes, very curious to see what the military would do in such a situation. I think you’re right re: the class thing. I could see top brass—the Establishment and such—siding with the coasts and the cities, but the good ol’ boys from backwoods South Carolina aren’t going to raise a gun against their fellow countrymen.

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      • That’s what I think, up to Lt Col or so, I think they’d go with the people, and some above, I’d bet. It would be revealing, I suspect.

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  4. […] “You Can’t Cuck the Tuck III: Liberty in The Age of The Virus” – I was worked up when I wrote this post, as was Tucker.  We keep watching our liberty die in exchange for the illusion of safety.  Tucker, in true fashion, offers a full-throated defense of liberty, and denounces the incompetent “experts” who keep insisting that we cower in fear. […]

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