From "Whose Freedom Counts?/Anti-lockdown protesters are twisting the idea of liberty" by Dahlia Lithwick (at Slate).
Kendi is Ibram X. Kendi who has an article in The Atlantic called "We’re Still Living and Dying in the Slaveholders’ Republic/The pandemic has brought the latest battle in the long American war over communal well-being." Lithwick instructs us that there is "a long-standing difference between core notions of what he calls freedom to and freedom from."
Lithwick's phrasing is confusing. It's "long-standing," so it's not as though Kendi invented the distinction between "freedom from" and "freedom to." Two out of 4 of FDR's "Four Freedoms" were "freedom from" (from want and from fear). I remember an early interview with Barack Obama, in which he observed that Americans think too much about "freedom to" and not enough about "freedom from."
Lithwick writes:
The freedom to harm, [Kendi] points out, has its lineage in the slaveholder’s constitutional notion of freedom: “Slaveholders disavowed a state that secured any form of communal freedom—the freedom of the community from slavery, from disenfranchisement, from exploitation, from poverty, from all the demeaning and silencing and killing.” Kendi continues by pointing out that these two notions of freedom have long rubbed along uneasily side by side, but that those demanding that states “open up” so they may shop, or visit zoos, are peeling back the tension between the two....How do you "peel back" "tension"? I had that image of 2 notions rubbing along uneasily side by side for a long time, and then these people who want to shop are "peeling back the tension." That kind of vaguely titillating metaphor is unfair to the reader. I'm seeing 2 notions in bed with each other and the would-be shoppers bursting in and ripping back the sheets. Aha! We see what you're doing! What a distraction! But I suppose that because slavery was invoked, I'm expected to listen without protest while Kendi's solemn, censorious lecture is promoted by an over-excited Lithwick. I resist. Sorry. I do hear what you're saying, and I see how well it works to justify depriving us of all freedom. There's never enough freedom from all the things in the world that might hurt us if we're not kept in eternal lockdown.
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143 comments:
I'll take my "freedom to" to work on my own "freedom from".
Because I don't trust any of the collectivist assholes to keep me free from anything.
I don't get the inchoate part about cleaning the zoos, buffing the nails and intubating the grandmas.
I also don't get the part about cleaning zoos. But I also dispute her notion that people are making "zero-sum" claims about liberty.
Dahlia Lithwick sure is smart.
“Nobody denied that individual liberty is essential in a democracy,” but some of us are willing to suspend it if the circumstances require it, and, guess what? they always do.
[Grr. Denies.]
Dahlia Lithwick says communal freedom, but bram X. Kendi says communal well-being.
Those two sages need to coordinate their rhetoric better.
There was no time when opposing lockdown was a decision to deliberately kill a bunch of seniors, or act as though as long as the winners are free, the losers can have any possible pain or indignity inflicted on them.
1. No one could figure out how to save even a high proportion of the frail seniors. They are the biggest group of those who have died under lockdown.
2. There were two justifications for the lockdown: save the hospitals from being swamped; prevent asymptomatic healthy people from infecting the seniors. It looks like the hospitals were not only saved, they were put in a situation of failing to provide a lot of essential services (I don't mean they were deliberately killing people). The seniors were not saved. It only takes one person, etc., and there is increasing evidence the lockdown came too late.
3. For some the faith in lockdown implies that we have the right combination of expertise and governmental power to end a lot of human misery. Is this not the history of modern medicine and the welfare state? I don't really blame any of the political decision makers, whether too optimistic, not optimistic enough, or whatever. But does anyone think we've had a reassuring trial run of philosopher-kings?
4. Freedom isn't just the default until experts and governments figure things out. Freedom allows individuals to arrive at outcomes better than the government would be likely to deliver to them. With cars and bars and private families, various kinds of injury and death come with freedom. This doesn't mean we are selfishly torturing and killing people.
5. The real history of modern medicine is at least partly cruel experiments that eventually, sometimes after many years, start to "work." Some cruel experiments have been carried out in the name of covid-19: too many ventilators used on frail seniors who die anyway, too much loss of mobility for people for whom this can be life-threatening, etc. Maybe the difference between respectable medical research and Nazi research is that the goal of helping each particular patient never entirely disappears. Maybe.
Our country is slowly losing it's appreciation for what freedom MEANS in the interests of controlling people "for their own good" or "for the good of the populace."
We see this in NYC as well as many other major cities. But during this crisis, all across the nation I see people wanting to restrict the movement of others for a specious community good without considering that the individual may be best positioned to make their own decision. And those decisions may have bad outcomes. But that possibility is not sufficient to limit their decisions.
There is good reason to wield public health powers to shut things down with disease. But the "pro restriction" folks are treating that as if it's an unlimited power. That as long as a threat - to any degree - is present, a shutdown is well justified and limiting free movement is ok.
I pray we come out of this on the right side.
Ibram X. Kendi
If my middle name started with the letter X, I would spell it out whenever I wrote my name.
I wonder if its Xenophon.
"Freedom from..."
I think what Lithwick is trying to say is that Freedom is Slavery.
Truly, Lithwick's Ignorance is her Strength.
"the freedom of the COMMUNITY from slavery"? I'm a lot more interested in the freedom of every individual from slavery. Seriously, how do you even enslave a "community"?
The only way to preserve our freedom is to obey our leaders without question and do exactly as we are told at all times.
Through invocations of ill defined terror.
John Borell came in first and nailed it.
LLoyd W. Robertson 5/8/20, 7:14 AM,
Wow, great comment.
The debate seems to be, opening up the economy will come at the price of life of innocents.
No one will tell me how many? Won't tell my how, or why. People die everyday of communicable diseases. People die everyday due to crashes that happen at legal speed, that would have survived at a low speed, life is a risk assessment.
It is not the constitutional roll of govt remove all risk.
Get this out of the hands of the executive and return it to legislative bodies. Our freedom is in danger of executive actions taken in the name of some undefinable threat. Emergencies are not months long. There has been plenty of time, for legislatures to represent voice of the people.
No discussion of "negative rights" as recognized by the Constitution?
In that context, isn't the "freedom from" the "freedom to"?
20.5 million jobs lost in April. Unemployment rate at 14.7 percent.
If you can't see the human tragedy in numbers like that you shouldn't be speaking.
Sigh. The sad truth is that "liberty" and "equality" are at fundamental odds with each other. We aspired, as a nation to equality "under the law", and that has never moved beyond "aspirational goal". The equality the modern progressives yearn for is equality of life outcomes which is impossible with any degree of individual liberty, let alone capability. And the world continues to produce generation after generation of aspiring tyrants who believe "society would be better, if only people were required to _______________". The founding generation were amazing people, filled with bright hope for the future.
"How do you "peel back" "tension"?"
Maybe start by not publishing those whose body of work is focused on division and tension?
So those police in New York City who beat the crap out of that black guy over social distancing were protecting his freedom?
Structure not feelings. What system works regardless who's in it.
Slavery was eliminated by the free market and property rights. A slave contributes more working in his own interest (selfish!) than he does working as a slave, in the free market system. So slavery becamse uneconomic, which it had not been formerly (enslave rather than kill your plunder victims).
Every single person in this country has the freedom to not go to to work, even during this pandemic.
Anyone who goes to work on any give given day chooses to do so. Their reasons and the consequences thereof will vary, but still, at that daily decision point, they opt to go to work.
People who use the word inchoate can shampoo my crotch. (Apologies to Melvin Udall)
>>People who use the word inchoate can shampoo my crotch.
This gets my vote for the most bizarre gay pickup line ever.
Rhhardin: theory and ideology cannot move a single shovel of dirt. I think you have watched too many rom-coms and suffer from some sort of feminized Stockholm syndrome and have quietly, incrementally become a quisling. That's right, you're a traitor to your sex.
Listening to msnbc yesterday afternoon. One air head interviewing another air head, about the shutdown and unemployment, because Trump...The expert said, honestly, this is his solution to unemployment...is a national jobs program, like the CCC program during the depression. Yep the solution to joblessness due to mandated shuttering of businesses, is a CCC style work program
These people can make you crazy.
Go ahead. Get out there. Make something of yourself.
That's excellent Dan. You duh man
By the way, I approve of anyone who is willing to clean up tiger poop. Thanks.
If only there were some concrete evidence that restricting normal lives under threats of force would produce a net positive in the long run, rather than making things worse.
These people are cannon fodder for your liberty.
And I hope her pre-existing zookeeper grandma dies, ha ha.
"We’re Still Living and Dying in the Slaveholders’ Republic"
Shouldn't that be the "slaveholders' plantation"?
MartyH, has it right and Dahlia Lithwick has it wrong.
Nobody is putting a gun to the head of hospital workers and forcing them to go to work. If any of them find treating Covid patients to be too risky, they are entirely free to quit!
It is like saying, a person is responsible for the deaths of lumberjacks because they live in a house made of wood, somebody has to take a risk to fall those trees! Or consuming any kind of food--food growing and processing involve risks, if you eat, it shows you don't care about those risks. If you drive or heat your home with gas, you don't care about roughnecks (very high risk job) who drill the wells to supply your greed. Etc.
One way to look at it is that the president declared war on an invisible enemy. the governor's responded by calling out the militia to stay indoors. There for ipso facto, the obese white male degenerates who support Trump through thick and dumb are refusing to show up for duty. It's just another draft for chicken hawks to dodge.
No one will tell me how many?
Only because you refuse to listen.
A good indication is the rate of excess deaths. And the numbers are not good.
The pandemic has released the monkey shit scoopers from slavery: anyone who wan't the government to get off our backs is literally advocating putting those people (sic) back in chains. This is the whole leftist straw man.
So Kendi believes that calling on group of people essential ( slaves) and saying that they must work to provide the needed services and food to a second group of people ( Masters) who spend all day sitting at home watching Netflix is better than having everyone go back to work?
People who write that allowing all people go back to work is a bad thing seem to always forget that there are a large number of people who go to work safely everyday to provide the services the group who stay at home relies on daily. If they truly believed that going to work is a bad thing they need to stop using electricity, water, food and anything they did not have in their homes prior to the lock down.
All my life I’ve heard how progressives really care for the poor and the hungry and the repressed. But now when 30 million Americans are unemployed, many out of food and money, forced by law to cheer in their homes long after the virus has peaked there is no compassion. There is no concern for 30 MILLION people at risk from hunger, lack of medical care, delayed cancer surgeries, people who need hips or knees replaced. No compassion for 200 million of us that believed the “2 weeks to slow the spread” knowing it was bullshit and we’d be asked for more. But they aren’t asking. They are demanding we starve so they can be less afraid of the flu. Progressives are the most selfish shortsighted of all Americans. Ghouls.
@Howard
You’re gay as a three dollar bill.
The only place I’ve ever encountered guys as obsessed as you are with that Biggus Dickus stuff (you know your constant yammering about manliness and such) was in the West Village.
When are you coming out of the closet?
In a high school civics class I was required the debate the merits of "Freedom from Choice" in the context of totalitarian governments. At the time we all thought the topic was ridiculous.
Now, nearly 50 years later, I'm thinking it was prophetic.
"But I suppose that because slavery was invoked, I'm expected to listen without protest while Kendi's solemn, censorious lecture is promoted by an over-excited Lithwick. I resist. Sorry. I do hear what you're saying, and I see how well it works to justify depriving us of all freedom. There's never enough freedom from all the things in the world that might hurt us if we're not kept in eternal lockdown."
That's a keeper, Ann.
Blogger rehajm said...
20.5 million jobs lost in April. Unemployment rate at 14.7 percent.
5/8/20, 7:32 AM
I feel this is a lot lower than expected, and doesn't really jive with the other information being put out by the media. (of course, it isn't surprising that the media propaganda machine can't get their stories straight).
>>When are you coming out of the closet?
As soon as you agree to shampoo his crotch.
Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose/
Nothin', don't mean nothin' hon' if it ain't free...
And you know how that turned out.
Freedom of choice is what you got.
Freedom from choice is what you want.
It's interesting you bring up lumberjacks which is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. When I first started working on massive diesel-electric drilling rigs in the geysers geothermal field, half of the roughnecks were former NorCal lumberjacks and they got into roughnecking because it was way safer. In the course of my two and a half years in that industry one of my friends was killed one of my friends had half his foot cut off about a half-dozen guys I drank without the bar got 3rd degree burns and a couple guys lost fingers and one guy had multiple compound fractures on his femur.
So yeah they volunteered to do dangerous work just like people like Allen S, Achilles, Lucid, jaydub, Stephen Cooper etc volunteered to fight on our behalf in failed wars. I suppose all of their comrades who were wounded or killed knew what they were getting into so it's no skin off my nose, right? a f*** their PTSD they're just pussies they knew what they were getting into and now they just back for our sympathy for their weakness, right? The chicken hawk meme runs deep with you people.
People Sleep Peacefully in Their Beds at Night Only Because Rough Men Stand Ready to Do Violence on Their Behalf
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose....Nothin', don't mean nothin' hon' if it ain't free,
The long-standing tension between individual liberty and the collective good is complicated
True. If your choices are going to kill other people then probably your freedom to do, is less important than the others to be free from. Drunk driving for instance. HOWEVER, wanting to go back to work when there is NOT an epidemic is not one of those things.
Freedom:
Being free to make your OWN choices and decisions
Choose to stay home and huddle in your closet until Big Brother TELLS you what to do. Fine. You do that.
Choose to temporarily stay home because you don't want to get sick or make anyone sick. Good best idea...at the time. Altruistic. Perhaps it worked.
Decide this is all bullshit by now, and overblown by Big Brother. AND Choose to go back to work so you can feed your family and survive. Eating and living instead of playing along with the Kabuki Theater.
Not all of us have a steady income or the financial resources to take a "staycation" and stay home and morally preen themselves. Others even now are working doing the dirty jobs....LIKE ALWAYS!
I want the states to open back up, not so I can shop, but so that people who are hurting now, losing their homes, their businesses, their jobs can go back to work. Not only does this benefit THEM....it benefits all of society to have a functioning economy and not millions of homeless beggars on the streets. Crime will begin to look pretty good then. So will the measures to protect ourselves from the criminals.
Enough is enough. Get out of our way.
Boy, Howard is on a weird binge this morning. Maybe ST is right about you, Howard.
This:
I resist. Sorry. I do hear what you're saying, and I see how well it works to justify depriving us of all freedom.
Shouting Thomas is asking me to tell him about the rabbits.
TreeJoe said:
"There is good reason to wield public health powers to shut things down with disease. But the "pro restriction" folks are treating that as if it's an unlimited power. That as long as a threat - to any degree - is present, a shutdown is well justified and limiting free movement is ok."
My fear is that this lock down will become a precedent and model for future, less noble power grabs. I find the protests encouraging, but the over reach by some governors has been disturbing.
More than half of U.S. counties have had zero Covid deaths. ZERO!
The value of safety can also be rhetorically twisted into something ugly if that's what you need to do, but the value of it remains for those who value it more than freedom. You are not doing those workers any favors by ruining their economy and culture along with the rest of us. The ugliness and overreach is with the safety-first crowd. It's not the freedom seekers calling the cops on their neighbors.
I assume this virus will stay with us a long time, and data seems to show that. Even if not, there will be others, as there has always been. So those of you who believe in hiding from viruses as the strategy need to tell the rest of us just how long and in what manner of luxury you would like us to support you, becuase so far it's been as long as it takes and, at least the level we are used to. Maybe we should call you'all "Masta".
What leaps out at me is the evolving meaning of "freedom *from*". I've heard that as a counterbalance against explicit freedoms, pointing out their harms. Example: Your freedom to speak has to be balanced against my freedom from offense. Your freedom to own the fruits of your labor has to be balanced against my freedom from poverty. Your freedom to self-defense has to be balanced against deaths from gun crimes. And so on.
FDR was pretty clearly balancing the Freedom from Want against individual property rights.
Here, Lithwick quotes Kendi referring to Slavery in terms of a communal right, "the freedom of the community from slavery." They do the same for the right to vote ("the freedom of the community... from disenfranchisement") and free speech ("the freedom of the community ... from all the demeaning and silencing...")
It's hard to wrap my head around the notion that the wrong of Slavery isn't about the violation of the individual rights of the person who is enslaved. It's hard to think of a clearer example of the violation of individual rights and freedoms than slavery. It's the turn-the-dial-to-11 version of a rights violation. It's not even clear to me what Kendi and Lithwick think the actual violation is -- Slavery is bad, so the community has a right to be free from that bad thing. But what's the inherent bad, if it isn't the brutal violation of the rights and freedoms of the individual people who are enslaved?
It seems like "freedom to" and "freedom from" are just there to tag different rights as good or bad.
If you click through to the Atlantic article she cites, it's all about how slaveholders invoked arguments of individual rights, therefore any argument about individual rights is suspect and wrong. Any call for personal freedoms is really a call to enslave others. From Kendi: "From the beginning of the American project, the powerful individual has been battling for his constitutional freedom to harm, and the vulnerable community has been battling for its constitutional freedom from harm."
More: "“LIBERATE MINNESOTA! LIBERATE MICHIGAN! LIBERATE VIRGINIA,” Trump tweeted not long ago, echoing secessionists long ago." It's straight out of 1984 -- Freedom is Slavery.
Last quote from Kendi: "The individual should be restricted from harming the community. The individual should be free to aid the community. When the community is king, the individual is no longer subjected, but protected."
Wow.
One in three people who died in a hospital died of sepsis. I think it works out to somewhere along the lines of a hundred thousand people per year. This type of expertise is what makes Dr. Michael Kennedy such an expert on the use of PPE during a pandemic.
"There is good reason to wield public health powers to shut things down with disease. But the 'pro restriction' folks are treating that as if it's an unlimited power. That as long as a threat - to any degree - is present, a shutdown is well justified and limiting free movement is ok."
I agree, but the problem goes deeper in this instance, because it's also the case that those claiming the right to curtail everyone's freedom in the interests of public health actually have very little idea what they're doing. It's obvious that they have no clear understanding of how this virus operates. They've been feeling their way around in the dark for weeks, guessing at what countermeasures might be effective. I don't necessarily fault them for not fully understanding what they're dealing with; but since the politicians and bureaucrats they don't have such an understanding, it follows that rank-and-file Americans shouldn't have to cede total authority to them to dictate the response.
Exactly right Conrad baby this is a fast spreading novel disease that everybody has a poor understanding of how it works how it spreads etc etc. What's your point? It's a very difficult potentially hugely tragic problem that required and immediate response and action. Fortunately this pandemic is on the lighter side of horrible so hopefully we will learn lots of lessons that will pay dividends during the next one that may not be so friendly.
You people have gotten used to how efficient our society is run that any disruption that is inconvenient to you gets your panties in a twist. Fortunately you are in an extreme minority because the actual Spirit of America still lives on in most of us.
I see people everyday who exercise their freedom to not go to work. The honorable ones are homeless. I usually see them on my way to work where I spend half of my efforts trying to support the other ones.
The Hive..always redefining and parsing "liberty" to justify taking it from you. It's interesting to me that she equates the arguments of antebellum Southern slave-owners with people fighting against modern statism. Such a historical and philosophical illiteracy is par for the course among modern "liberals," "progressives: and other State-shtuppers, but it
s essentially dishonest. "I'm not trying to tyrannize you," the statist claims; "you're trying to tyrannize ME." Nice sleight-of-hand there.
Getting back to the slave-owners, she hasn't read the arguments of the most eloquent of apologists for the slaveocracy, George Fitzhugh, who, read today, sounds eerily like the anti-capitalist Left. Fitzhugh, I understand, after the "Lost Cause" was finally and irrevocably lost, became an outright socialist. You have to give him credit for a kind of consistency, if nothing else.
Watch out for the people who see a crisis, not asa problem to be solved, but as a chance to enact fundamental changes.
Howard thinks 14% unemployment is "any disruption that is inconvenient to you."
I suspect Howard worked at one of those jobs that did not produce anything.
"You people" seems to be a favorite insult Nitschke scholar pseudo tough guy Howard loves to throw around. Must be because it's at his third grade spelling level.
Freedom is the right of the individual, and only the individual. It is not a state or condition of a collective.
If I hear the "we're all in this together" commie trope one more time I'm going to puke.
Ok, Howard, here's the song specifically written for your dilemma over your sexual identity:
I'm a Lumberjack and I'm OK!
Howard. It's interesting you bring up lumberjacks which is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. When I first started working on massive diesel-electric drilling rigs in the geysers geothermal field, half of the roughnecks were former NorCal lumberjacks and they got into roughnecking because it was way safer.
This is something I know a bit about too. My husband's father owned his own small logging company in the 1940's in Oregon (at the age of 22. His father was a farmer) and later a big Redwood logging company in Humboldt in the 50-60's. Husband worked in his Dad's companies and was a feller at first and then choke setter on the redwoods and did high lead logging. It is hard dangerous work. After a while...he chose not to continue and went into another trade and started his own business.
A lot of work is hard and dangerous. A lot of work is tedious and mind numbing. Rarely is work entertaining. Sometimes, like my husbands current work..it is hard, challenging (solving the puzzles) and rewarding in spirit (gets to be a hero in the eyes of his clients) and pays the bills.
What it all has in common is that work, is necessary to keep society running. It brings income, which pays for food, shelter and eventually the ability to acquire more assets so that you don't have to work as hard.
Work is different than being DRAFTED into the military. You can choose to work or change jobs. Being drafted is temporary slavery if you don't want to go. Many people DID choose to join the military (my family. Air Force and Army since WWI and before in all American Wars including the Revolutionary War). People get hurt in the military. People get hurt logging. People get hurt lifting boxes in an Amazon Warehouse. We should thank each and everyone of those people including the guy who is getting you your morning Starbucks coffee.
Are zoos not being cleaned during the lockdown? Peee-Yoooou!
At Peace Pavilion West, we recognize every community member as deserving justice against oppressive authority, not being truly free.
For this reason, EVERY injustice is proof of systemic oppression. Bravo Dahlia.
The guy waiting your table? The women feeding her kids lunch? The kid shoveling your driveway? Black and brown bodies juxtaposed in space?
Victims of the Capitalist Global Elite. Falsely conscious zombies jogging on a spiritually vacuous, individually isolated, morally bankrupt, Nature destroying treadmill for life.
Like our Leader, mx Lithwick and Dr Kendi Preach liberation from oppression. Don’t be afraid to experiment sexually, spiritually, politically and morally. Start to see reality as it is, and gain new knowledge of that reality. Start imagining the fairer, more Equal and more socially just society to come.
Now come and make it happen at Peace Pavilion West!
Freedom is slavery.
Does 1,200 calories of guaranteed bug-paste sound good to you? Would you like to hunt in the morning and fish in the afternoon now that excess capital works for all?
How about women, men and children getting along, being seen as equal community members, and recognized for their common humanity?
No more racism, sexism, and environmental degradation.
No more Nazis and tyrants, and dictators. Pure democracy. Pure freedom. Equal outcomes.
Off route 9.
It's a very difficult potentially hugely tragic problem that required and immediate response and action. Fortunately this pandemic is on the lighter side of horrible...
“Potentially!” All potentially tragic problems require immediate response and action!
This should keep us busy... doing anything besides productive work of our choice.
“On the lighter side of horrible...”
So, really, Howard admits it was all bullshit.
We have always been at war with Covid 19
The greatest exercise of socialism in America was the plantation. The plantation owner was the state.
Today I'll have to check with Massah DeWine about where I'm allowed to go and what I'm allowed to do.
DBQ. I'm pretty certain all those people I mentioned volunteered for military service. We should honor people who make huge sacrifices and put themselves in danger to make our world a better place to live in. It's not surprising that the comrades of Trump show no respect for these people. I'm sure all of you applauded the way Trump dress down that nurse the other day who complained about the lack of PPE in her hospital. I'm sure glad he put that whining b**** in her place who the f*** does she think she is talking to our president in such a disrespectful manner. Only cheerleaders need apply.
J. Crew and Neiman Marcus are done, never mind the 'mom-and-pop' shops that are never coming back.
Just more Left-wing bullshit. I'm not in the mood to dissect it, and interact with it.
These weirdos have the media megaphone and they drown out all sensible discussion.
The job of life and literature coach, leader of calisthenics classes, and lol good guy is still open, Howard.
Your community needs you.
Free ecopodment just off the Human Pagoda.
Namaste.
Wow. Both of them appear to be carrying the heavy Weight-of-the-World. Perhaps they need a regime of Weight Release?
Edit my last post. The lumber company in Humboldt was from the late 550's until early 80's. Falling big treesThis is what husband did until he changed to chokersetter. ANDd This was my FIL's work Beginning of the video.... Every single day in his Oregon company. He was fearless.
Enjoy those redwood decks.
Work disconnect
The problem we have now is that many people...liberals in big cities in particular...have a big disconnect between the concept of work and the people who do the work and the products that they consume..
They think that meat magically appears in the grocery stores. That bread is just delivered by trucks and don't think about how the bread got there OR who the people are driving the trucks. Garbage is removed. Streets are cleaned. Sewers are kept clear. Electricity is on. ALL MAGICAL, for their own convenience.
They never consider the people who work night and day to make these things happen.
The panic is a bust.
It was another Get Trump scheme.
Let’s list (some of) the activities of the Democratic Party over the past 3-1/2 years:
- Rigged the 2016 primaries
- Fabricated the Russia collusion hoax
- Impeachment to cover the Bidens’ Russia/China rackets
- Economic sabotage using a “lighter side of horrible” pandemic as a weapon
Said shorter, "Workers of the world, unite!"
And, BTW, you're all still a bunch of irredeemable racists.
"Scrutiny of Social-Distance Policing as 35 of 40 Arrested Are Black"
By Ashley Southall
She black, so you know it's a fair rant.
"A police officer enforcing social-distancing rules broke up a group of people on a stoop during a nighttime cookout in East New York, Brooklyn, punching one man in the face."
Everybody involved black, so you know it was a fair punch.
Oh crap. Not from 550 that would be a really long time!! I need more coffee.
It takes a village accompanied by a well managed sheep farm; Dahlia is confident what part of town she lives.
Howard mentioned sepsis. I believe 1 in 3 people who die in a hospital have sepsis, not 1 in 3 die of sepsis.
CDC Report on Sepsis
The question was how many are preventable.
How preventable is sepsis-related death
The facts of the disease are real and developing. The economic damage is very serious and developing. Our leaders and political commentators are having a time of it, split open along the deeper fault lines.
I see many on the liberal Left projecting their own political, professional and ideological failures into the inflated concern trolling they have for Science and Virology and minding other people’s business. They desperately want to get back in power, in part to avoid the shit show that is Biden, Sanders, pension debt their own ideas and incentives etc
Many never Trumpers on the right just want to keep writing for money, and many always Trumpers will support any bit of half cocked Trump grandstanding, right or wrong.
I expect we’ll muddle through and pretty soon end up with a further Left political center for quite a while. Regulated economy. Slow growth. More ‘class’ warfare.
Ah, well
I like Lithwick's assumption that these freedom-lovers don't do those very same jobs!
It's not surprising that the comrades of Trump show no respect for these people.
The people who actually do things are the Trump supporters, not you Howard. I'm starting to worry about Howard.
The Emancipation Proclamation may have seemed like a good idea during a war-time emergency, but that cotton ain’t gonna pick itself.
FDR's formulation was pernicious, and I can't understand how any thinking person can accept one branch of it, or anyone familiar with the history of the constitution can accept the other, respectively:
1. You have positive rights vs. negative rights, and those rights include the right to the labor and/or property of other people.
2. Your rights are granted by the government, vs. your having natural rights, which oblige the government to defend them, and which constrain legitimate government power.
You can tell when someone is arguing FDR's point in bad faith, because they completely ignore that the appropriate locus of the collective is voluntary association—historically, charities and mutual aid societies—not the government.
I could use some freedom from the dead horse of slavery and the race baiters who profit economically or politically from beating it nonstop.
If you have any question about the durability of our Constitutional liberties, keep an eye on the conduct of unionized cops taking orders from police chiefs appointed by Democrat city councils.
Think Sacramento, San Jose, Portland, Charlotte, Dallas.
If sepsis deaths were included in the Democide figures, statists would be okay with it, or at least try to rationalize it as being for some Higher Good.
"There's never enough freedom from all the things in the world that might hurt us if we're not kept in eternal lockdown."
Exactly. But then prog paradise always required eternal lockdowns.
The dirty secret behind progs' obsession with slavery is that they like it: they just think the wrong people got enslaved for the wrong reason.
Now, it's not so secret anymore, as we see them arguing that we must all be slaves to alarmist fears.
When you hear someone using the word “inchoate”, you’re glad your mom gave you that word-a-day calendar for Xmas. It pays to increase your word power.
Liberal like that are SOOOO funny when they try to think. They come up with the darnedest things!! (old Art Linkletter reference)
Freedom cannot exist if there are people with power to take it away.
And those who resist must be prepared to demand their freedom.
Fuck all the Karens.
When you hear someone using the word “inchoate”, you’re glad your mom gave you that word-a-day calendar for Xmas.
I never hear it, I only read it, and consequently always forget how to pronounce it ('cho' vs 'ko').
Increasingly, we don't deserve the freedoms we have. Lithwick is an idiot of the highest order.
There was a commenter the other day who had a similar complaint about the protests, and I asked him to define the limiting principle for the mass violations of constitutional rights, and he wrote a lot words that basically came down to an admission that there weren't any- that the violations are allowed whenever someone in power argues that they are necessary.
If you can't define the limiting principle, then you are no better than a despot.
Doc Mike...Most of the deplorables commenting on this site are office workers completely detached from the harsh realities of the dangerous jobs that people do everyday in basic industry like energy fuel chemicals power food water sewer heavy construction. The only two refulars I can think of with real industrial experience are John Henry and Oso Negro... I probably missed some others.
And D. D. Driver nails it with the reference to Orwell- the greatest prophet of the 20th century.
Always keep in mind that these people were statists before the pandemic and if the Kung Flu had never existed, would be statists anyway. Liberty is always the enemy, doesn't matter what excuse they come up with for statism. It wasn't like they were libertarians before the pandemic; so their thoughts on the pandemic are ultimately irrelevant. Their eternal battle cry is "Statism now, statism forever!"
On sepsis deaths, "“Sepsis is a leading cause of death,” explains Dr. Rhee, “but since most of these deaths are occurring in very complex patients with severe comorbidities, many of them may not be preventable with better hospital-based care.”
Sepsis is a final common pathway for deaths in hospital. Most other causes are treatable with better results.
It's a little like the procedure of "Exploratory Laparotomy," which is listed with a 33% mortality rate. The operation is not very dangerous and used to be one of the most common procedures. Now, with all the imaging technology, the only indication for most exploratory laps is severe trauma with an unstable patient too sick to go through the imaging procedures. Hence the high mortality of a pretty nominal operation.
The same applies to sepsis as a cause of death. Shock is now pretty treatable, much more so than when I was a medical student.
It's a little like death certificates that list cause of death as "cardiac arrest." Not many people survive cardiac arrest.
Remember, the latest guidance from Wuhan is 3 m physical distancing, 6 if you follow the precautionary principle. And, yes, you can be afflicted (e.g. immunocompromised) by the disease through the spread of social contagion (e.g. press, social platforms).
"Whose Freedom Counts?/Anti-lockdown protesters are twisting the idea of liberty" by Dahlia Lithwick (at Slate).
#HateLovesAbortion
"Lithwick's phrasing is confusing. It's "long-standing," so it's not as though Kendi invented the distinction between "freedom from" and "freedom to." Two out of 4 of FDR's "Four Freedoms" were "freedom from" (from want and from fear). I remember an early interview with Barack Obama, in which he observed that Americans think too much about "freedom to" and not enough about "freedom from."
The "freedom from" vs "freedom to" argument was precisely the rhetoric used by the Soviet Union to claim theirs was actually a more free society than the US.
It was pretty clear Donahue bought that line from his handler Pozner.
Depriving healthy Americans of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is immoral, can be allowed only in a state of emergency and must be the least intrusive as possible to achieve its goal. The stated goal was slow the spread. Outside NY we have done our job. The government is immoral to imprison and impoverish millions when only the at-risk need be protected. If the prisons and convalescent homes have it then government already failed the weak. Let the strong return to work.
My wife died of stomach cancer, but the immediate cause of her death was sepsis.
When we decided not to go thru another devastating, but useless surgery, her intestines ruptured.
Thus, sepsis.
Jimmy K, good point. I’ve probably heard the word, but I can’t be sure. I bet there’s at least one video of Buckley Jr. saying it.
Howard imagines that Trump supporters are office workers and not truck drivers and farmers and others who do the basic economic foundations. Plumbers and carpenters or contractors like my stepson or firemen like one of my sons.
Howard, you have no idea of who the 25 million people who listen to Rush Limbaugh are.
You are in the prog bubble, Howard,.
Remember the advertising slogan, "It's always time for Jello"? To the statists, with their eternal drive for power, it's NEVER time for liberty.I'm sure the first Pharoah, ascending to the throne, said something like, "Well, a free society might have been fine back when we were living in caves, but now that Ra has appointed me to rule over all of you, those days are over." And the Dahlia Lithwicks, the "Dathans" of their time, would be telling the populace how great it was that Pharoah was on the throne to protect them all from the folly that is freedom.
Where do I sign up to happily sacrifice Dahlia Lithwick?
Among the jobs I’ve done:
Shoveling animal shit on farms, driving tractors, detasseling corn, slaughtering and dressing livestock and hunting kills, painting houses, painting U.S. mailboxes, baling hay, assembling electronic parts, chemical cleaning of electronic parts, etc.
Yeah, I’ve been an office worker since my mid-20s, but I paid my dues.
I wanted to save my hands from being disfigured or maimed so that I could continue to play piano, and I succeeded.
Howard: "You people have gotten used to how efficient our society is run that any disruption that is inconvenient to you gets your panties in a twist."
Nope. I haven't argued against merely "any disruption that is inconvenient"; I'm arguing against the notion that elected officials and bureaucrats have unconstrained power to impose whatever measures they think might do some good in combating a public health threat.
Also, I don't accept the idea that our society is "run," efficiently or otherwise. I certainly don't agree with the implication that our public officials have the authority to run society. Their role is to run the government, not dictate how people live their lives.
The idea that there was some dialectical relationship between the ideal of freedom and the reality of slavery in American history has been circulating for some time. Weaponizing the concept and applying it to political disputes now can undercut our devotion to freedom by associating one's own freedom with slavery for other people. That's dangerous, but it's what people do nowadays.
The distinction between "freedom from" and "freedom to" also goes back, most notably to Isaiah Berlin. There's an added wrinkle here. Usually "freedom from" is freedom from government restrictions and "freedom to" is presented as things government can do for us. Here it's "freedom to" work (freedom from government restrictions) and "freedom from" disease (presented as something provided by the government).
Two problems with Lithwick. 1) It's the people who do the nails and the hair and other people who provide services and have bills to pay who are clamoring to go back to work, not so much the consumers of their services. 2) There's no absolute guarantee of security from the virus. There are only precautions one can take or impose. So "freedom from" coronavirus may be a chimera.
For extra points: If you were writing or reading a novel and one of the characters was named "Dahlia Lithwick" what would that character look like and be like?
There is no communal freedom; there is only individual freedom.
There is no "freedom from"; there is only "freedom to".
"Freedom from want." What is that? Give me "freedom to want."
The only way the government can give you "freedom from want" is to constrain what you are allowed to want.
"Freedom from want": where the government gives you a house, food, etc. so that you no longer have want of them.
What if you want a better house, better food, better etc.? Too bad. You're not allowed.
I resist. Sorry. I do hear what you're saying, and I see how well it works to justify depriving us of all freedom. There's never enough freedom from all the things in the world that might hurt us if we're not kept in eternal lockdown.
Do you really resist? Or will you keep voting for corrupt Democrats?
As long as people who still have the ability to think for themselves prefer to vote for more corruption because someone like Trump is "too weird", we will keep losing our freedom. I already don't recognize my country. Tourists are being arrested in Hawaii. And people have to fear getting detained if they cross a border to visit their mother on Mother's day.
Keep voting for the party which disseminates bullshit like this and you can expect to get more of it. Democrats want power over every aspect of our lives. And with the help of the unremitting voice of the DNC-connected media they just might get it.
Most of my family, male and female alike, have been turned into unthinking zombies that regurgitate the latest DNC talking points. Not from watching the news; only the elderly watch the news. But the under 60 crowd get their "news" from Facebook memes handed down from the DNC-connected media propagandists. They seem to be happy with the "new normal" and are ok to wear masks and stay locked down indefinitely. They don't resist.
I just looked up Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms." What a hot mess.
According to Deputy Founding Father Norman Rockwell, we all have the right to be tucked in by Mommy and Daddy in a comfy suburban bedroom.
The only way the government can give you "freedom from want" is to constrain what you are allowed to want.
This.
Lurker21 Two problems with Lithwick. 1) It's the people who do the nails and the hair and other people who provide services and have bills to pay who are clamoring to go back to work, not so much the consumers of their services.
2) There's no absolute guarantee of security from the virus. There are only precautions one can take or impose. So "freedom from" coronavirus may be a chimera.
These are the two main issues. Without work and no income it is a certainty that the unemployed nail artist, construction worker will eventually be bankrupt and possibly starving. This is certain.
If you do go back to work there is a small chance that you might catch SARS-Covid-19. But you will be able to feed your family, pay your bills, not be destroyed.
Certainty vs Chance Absolute certainty versus Small chance. Working people make these choices every single day.
Rational people who live in the real world can weight those concepts and decide that taking a Chance is better than being forced into the Certainty.
This is free will in action.
Dahlia fails to tell us who is going to make the list of "freedom froms" or what criteria are used to determine what qualifies a a "Freedom from". But her biggest failure is to believe that Kendi is a serious person with serious ideas.
(Here's Kendi borrowing the fundamental principle of the Chinese Communist Party: "The individual should be restricted from harming the community. The individual should be free to aid the community. Where the community is King, the individual is no longer subjected, but protected.")
It is not a wackadoo conspiracy theory that people are exploiting this crisis to promote a political agenda. They have even brought in octogenarian Jocelynn Elders to prove that contrary to the actual data, the April election really was as catastrophic as originally fantasized. Why not bring in a pediatrician when an epidemiologist is needed?
Because "we were not in as much danger as we feared" is not acceptable. Anything short of PANIC! is now wrongthink.
So the million dollar question is: why does the left need us to be so afraid?
There's never enough freedom from all the things in the world that might hurt us if we're not kept in eternal lockdown.
I'd call this a failure of both intelligence and empathy. Yes, public health lock downs can be overbroad or overlong.
But it's also true that they can be lifted too soon, and there seems to be a big risk of that in the many American jurisdictions that have failed to follow the White House guidelines on the issue.
To pick only one example, when reopening comes too soon or too thoughtlessly, and is coupled with failure to provide or suspension of unemployment benefits, that can effectively compel ordinary citizens to work in very unsafe conditions. Like meat packing plants, Wisconsinites.
Both the appearance and the fact of coercion is increased when, as in many states, pressure to go back to work is combined with government efforts to suppress accurate information about the risks involved (including that provided in CDC guidelines) or to strip employees of legal remedies against their employees for unsafe working conditions.
Against this perspective, Trump's ludicrous characterization of workers as warriors looks like self serving BS; for many, it's more like workers as conscripts, kept in the dark and stripped of their rights.
It's possible, though not easy, to reach thoughtful solutions that respect both kinds of freedom, even though they don't please everyone. It takes serious attention to the economic and scientific facts, hard and creative thinking, and honest acknowledgment of the uncertainties and trade-offs. The leaders who follow that path (Cuomo, DeWine) deserve respect. Others, not so much.
I gave up on The ATLANTIC some years ago.
if you're against freedom now, then you don't get it when it comes back.
It is amazing to see Americans engaged in playing word games.
speak in complete sentences dammit.
it is freedom to work that gives you freedom from want.
if you fear to exercise your freedom to work then you don't deserve to live.
If I hear the "we're all in this together" commie trope one more time I'm going to puke.
Seconded.
The only way the government can give you "freedom from want" is to constrain what you are allowed to want.
Or by forcing others to give you what you "want."
Same with rights. Those in the Bill of Rights are individual and/or to provide protection against government. No one has the right to be "free from want," never mind a right to health care, or other "rights" and "freedoms" dreamed up by the left.
Is this the same lying Lythwick who claimed that Nifong had "mounds and mounds of evidence" to convict the Duke lacrosse students. This is who we are supposed to listen to about "freedom" and "liberty?"
'How do you "peel back" "tension"?'
I can help out here. This is academic-speak. It is intended to be confusing, and you are supposed to respond to that confusion by admiring the superior intellectual qualities of the confusor. Dahlia Lithwick is smarter than you, and her ideas are better than yours, because she expresses them poorly. OK?
Now, "peel back" means to remove a covering. Thus, to disclose. Tension, in this context, is the possibility that what seems obvious when you think about A might seem less obvious when you think about B. Of course, Dahlia failed to recognize that what is "peeled back" would not be the thing revealed, but the thing preventing its revelation. Dahlia Lithwick is actually not smart enough to use her own pretentious bullshit consistently, or maybe she's just too lazy. Anyway, she is much smarter and better-educated than all of us, and it's a shame we get to vote in her elections.
Where does X suppose the hair salons' customers get the money to pay for their haircuts? From a tree?
perfect illustration of the noxious examples that orwell noted in 'politics of the English language,' also the reproach to billy Madison, suggests itself,
>>People who use the word inchoate can shampoo my crotch.
This gets my vote for the most bizarre gay pickup line ever.}}}
It works like a charm at the LBGT Bar Association soirees. Especially if you let a travel-sized bottle of Herbal Essence peek out of the top of your breast pocket.
Nobody denies that individual liberty is essential in a democracy, but i
What's the saying, something about anything before the "but" doesn't count...?
Libertarians have used the metaphor of a (well-run, safe) prison as a metaphor for the Leftist (and/or Communist) twisted ideal of personal "freedom" (from material want, danger, threat to others, etc) for as long as I can remember.
God how I wish every "writer" was commanded to read Orwell's discussion of the English language before profaning paper.
How's that for freedom, dumb dumb Dahlia?
The articles conclusions are exactly wrong. A couple of states cited in the article, Alabama and Georgia. From the referenced data source, COVID Racial Data Tracker.
Alabama % of Population % of Positive Cases % of Deaths
Blacks 26.8 44.2 46.3
Whites 65.4 51.1 50.7
Georgia % of Population % of Positive Cases % of Deaths
Blacks 32.4 49.0 50.3
Whites 52.4 51.3 45.4
Comparing the % of positive tests (a person has the virus) to the % of deaths in Alabama, we see the death rate closely matches the infection rate. This means if you have the virus, the probability of death is the same whether you are black or white. But if you are black, you are more likely to catch the virus. But hard to see how catching the virus is specifically related to race. The Georgia data does not match quite as closely, but it's similar.
But hard to see how catching the virus is specifically related to race.
The population getting tested isn't random, it's the more symptomatic cases. Maybe blacks are more likely to have symptoms strong enough that they get tested.
But hard to see how catching the virus is specifically related to race.
Not catch, but a viable infection. Viruses are notoriously diversitist.
The characterization that blacks are dying at disproportionally higher rate than their population is true. But it is true only because blacks are being infected at a much higher rate than would be expected based on population and that in turn results in a higher death rate. This calls into question the assertion that black people are more likely to die from the virus than white people due to race. From a biology point of view, there are no apparent reasons that would suggest blacks or whites are more/less prone to catch the virus (in the first place), so there must be other reasons that are not directly tied to race.
The primary reason cited for catching the virus is being in close contact with infected people in some form or fashion, which is a function of physical separation from infected people. Staying at home, avoiding crowds, maintaining distance in public, observing good hygiene (hand washing). These attributes deal with behavior – not race.
A reason often cited for blacks dying at a rate higher rate than whites due to the virus is that blacks have less access to medical services and more underlying health conditions than white people However, if there was a substantial contribution to the virus deaths due to less access to medical services and more underlying health conditions, the expectation would be that the black death rate due to the virus would be higher than that for whites. But the COVID data shows the risk of black people dying (once infected) is not higher but rather similar whether the person black or white.
The above observation holds for is true for Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee and reasonably close in North Carolina, Michigan, and Virginia. Many states do not report race infection/death data. Notable states that don't report race data are New York and New Jersey
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