ED-057 wrote:So when someone comes along insisting that you should "just" cede a "little" more control over your own life to whatever supposedly benevolent authority, there is a 99.9% chance that:
1) give an inch and they'll take a mile
2) you'll never get it back
3) another door is opened to future abuse
Dude, this is
literally the summary of your position that I gave in response to your original post:
if you're willing to give up any freedom, to any degree, under any circumstances, you don't value freedom at all (though of course the standard attached rider goes beyond merely devaluing freedom to outright "hating" it, and possessing an intense desire to
take it away from those who have it,
just because 
). Where exactly do you get off accusing me of "dragging out the strawman"?
Look, I'll attempt to be fair here: obviously concerns to this end don't come from nowhere. Sometimes it's right out there in the open ("we'll start it as a temporary measure, and hope as people see its benefits there will be support to renew it later") while other times it's more of a "let's hope they don't notice" effort (as I will never tire of pointing out, the portions of Trump's tax cuts that benefit lower-end citizens will be largely phased out in the name of "fiscal responsibility", while those going to the rich are permanent). Are there things in the law that we'd hoped wouldn't stay with us, but have? Absolutely.
Here's the thing, though: in the face of this problem, there are really only two choices: 1) Attempt to mitigate such abuses of power while still giving the government the ability to do some good, or 2) Render the government largely ineffectual, and hope that whoever fills the power vacuum will
somehow not do
exactly the same thing. Presumably you would prefer that private entities (btw, wouldn't that include, and frankly be dominated by, the "oligarchs" you've railed against?) be given authority over much of what the government is doing in terms of pandemic response (and thus I would also
assume that you are outraged by the government's effort in Florida and elsewhere to prohibit private businesses from enacting internal mask/vaccine mandates of their own), but I would love, love,
love to hear you argue that the private sector hasn't made an absolute
art form out of very gradually giving
us less and less, making us give
them more and more for it, and exerting increasing control over things we supposedly "own". Or, for that matter, that we should be eager for a return to a time when we had no idea if our food would make us sick or our medicine actually worked (not that, oh, I don't know, colloidal silver or Ivermectin have given us a reminder or anything), and nobody was under any obligation whatsoever to tell us.
As far as the "mitigation" I mentioned, one would hope that anybody concerned with "power creep" in government would be in favor of both a
dramatically increased focus on civics, so citizens would have a better idea of what was happening, what it meant, and what they could do to oppose it if necessary, as well as streamlined access to the polls, to enable them to make their voice known (as such, I again
assume you're vehemently against the various "voter integrity" measures being enacted across the country, all of which are being "justified" on an event which never actually occurred). Of course such measures wouldn't completely solve the problem - nothing will ever completely erase the human tendency to take just a
liiittle bit more - but if you really want to "acknowledge certain trends" you ought to be
very hesitant to take the position that any ruling authority which doesn't have the "government" label on it is innately less prone to abuse than one that does.
Getting a vaccine and complying with a mandate are two different things. Humans are capable of giving informed consent and have the right to be afforded a choice.
People are capable of making the logical choice not to smoke, but often don't, frequently for precisely the same
fuck you, nobody tells me what to do attitude people are citing as the "reason" not to get vaccinated (it always amazes me how such folks effortlessly manage to be so self-important and so self-destructive at the same time); does that mean that the rest of us shouldn't be able to enact limits on smoking, and just meekly accept the very real, quantifiable harm that being around smokers does to us?
On that note...
And what happens when all the Napoleans out there decide to push for a mandate so they can feel important and it turns out that their vaccine doesn't stop infection, it doesn't stop transmission, and it becomes plain to everyone with eyes that the virus they were supposedly going to eradicate is just going to become endemic after all?
You've already assured us that you're not going to read it, because that's apparently how being an open-minded and well-informed person works, but
here it is anyway.
)
Never change Burgerville 
