When did our Values of "Life and Liberty" become Pro Death instead?

Disclaimer: Spent some time pondering where this thread belonged. It touches on the abortion issue but it is not about abortion itself. It touches on religion but it is not about religion either. It touches on politics but it is not purely a political question either. There is an economic aspect to this topic but it is not only about the economy. The only commonality to all of the above is the mortality rate of Covid19 and how it impacts all of the above. Given that rationale I have chosen this forum. Feel free to move it elsewhere if there is a more appropriate venue for this discussion.

Today the Coronavirus touched Rural America in Gallup, NM. The small town of 22,000 was shut down because it has over 1,000 cases and the ICU units in both hospitals are maxed out. This is not an isolated instance. Rural communities are in trouble.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/08/us/coronavirus-rural-america-cases.html

Something on the order to 10% of all infections, 100,000+, are now in rural America.

OTOH we saw the gun toting protesters in Michigan screaming at the police preventing them from staging a coup because they are demanding that the governor must reopen the economy in the state in spite of not meeting the Federal guidelines for opening safely.

Those protesters are claiming that that they have some imaginary "right" to override public safety and put the lives of their fellow Americans at needless risk. That risk INCLUDES some of them DYING!

Since when did the concept of MY right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness come at the expense of YOUR right to Life?

The argument that the economy take precedence over the right to life runs afoul of the Golden Rule to Love Your Neighbor as You Love Yourself. Not giving a crap if your elderly neighbor dies just as long as you can continue to earn enough to pay the rent and buy beer makes a mockery of that concept.

The protesters outside of abortion clinics screaming about the "sanctity of life" have a lot in common with those protesters we say screaming in Michigan. White gun toting Christians who have accepted Jesus and had their sins forgiven are now putting their need to have the roots of their hair dyed over and above the lives of those dying in nursing homes.

Can we place an economic value on someone's life? Is it possible to say that Aunt Delilah who is now 74 is worth less than a 6 pack of beer or an hour at the Beauty Salon? Does it no longer matter that Delilah was the school teacher who used her own money to buy books and pencils and art supplies for the children in her classrooms that have grown up and are now screaming about their right to attend a football game or a political rally?

Ultimately this all does come back to the virus itself!

If there was a cure or a vaccine then none of this matter because we could ensure that Aunt Delilah's life would be saved if reopening the economy resulted in her being infected by the virus.

But there is no vaccine and there is no cure!

So we are faced with sacrificing her golden years in return for our own 30 pieces of silver.

When those gun toting Christians arrive at the Pearly Gates how are they going to explain their actions to their Savior?

The alternative is to be patient and allow the necessary precautions and preventative measures to be put into place so that when the economy does reopen everyone is wearing a mask and there sanitizing stations at the entrance to every shop and there are shields in place to protect cashiers and people voluntarily stand 6' apart when in a queue.

The mad rush to reopen the economy means TRASHING the values of Life and Liberty. A little patience means that we can continue to uphold those values.

Which brings me to the political motivation for prematurely opening the economy. Is the outcome of the election in November really worth flushing the values of Life and Liberty down into the sewer? Have we abandoned all pretense of having any values at all? Are we worshiping the Almighty Dollar as a false idol because we have forsaken everything that our nation once stood for?

There are a lot of questions in this OP and my own conscience tells me that patience is the virtue that will enable us to reopen the economy safely and the sooner we all comply with the safeguards the sooner we can reopen.

So to reduce this to a single question I would like to know what your conscience is telling you to do?

 

Stop stupid measures that haven't stopped anything

 

Open up, and get back to work, because the cure is going to be far worse than the disease if the economy is allowed to keep crashing.

 

Unfortunately it’s a deadly mix of misinformation and politics. I wish it wasn’t so.

 

How do you know this? How do you know that if we had not done what we did we might not now be facing deaths into the millions? If you examine the successes and failures from overseas it quickly becomes very evident that what we have done does actually work and failing to do so indeed costs thousands of lives. The only failures are in those countries that didn't do it enough (like Italy and the USA) and the successes (like South Korea) are obvious and notable.

OTOH there was a guy on the tv (Colbert, I think) and he was saying that what we should do now is double down on our protection of the vulnerable groups while relaxing our vigilance in regard to populations not at exacerbated risk. I can't help but think that may be a good idea. If you're a septuagenarian diabetic you should be given free delivery of everything and maybe the guy dropping your stuff off at the doorstep after he sanitizes it can be one of those screaming hodaddies who is willing to die for his beer and baseball.

 

Speculating is fun.
Demonstrate that we've done anything.
This thing is widely disseminated

 

The beer and baseball is liberty. This is a question of life vs liberty, not both against some third value never explained.

But I wondered something. I keep seeing reports of farmers dumping milk, chickens being euthanized, farmers plowing under crops. These is stuff that was expected to be eaten and is now destroyed. Is this pandemic about to turn into a famine?

 

None of us really knows the right way. This is all so very new. It's a balance between money and health. If we choose health, the financial hardships will be devastating. But populations have been there before. Crashes and poverty are not new. 'Going without' is not new. It's just new to us - those who haven't gone through it before. Most live well above their means and see the possibility of less as devastating. Which is understandable. But is it more important than health?

Perhaps the new normal will show people how to have balance in their lives. It will show us that we don't NEED the things we have believed to be needs in the past.

As for me - while I would dearly love to be able to climb out from this social isolation, I value the lives of those I know and love more.

 

Stay strong my friend, this too shall pass!

 

Yeh, life vs liberty. Life vs the the liberty to die. How apt.

If it is a famine it will be like one of Stalin's enforced famines in the 1930's, when food was destroyed so as to kill millions by starvation.

 

If we've not done anything then what are you protesting?

 

Yes. The Liberty to live life as you see fit, including the risk of death.

Here food is being destroyed because it can't be taken to the market. You don't see that?

 

It will, indeed! Thanks.

I suppose I am more contemplative these days. And while, some days, it has led me to worry, other days it has led me to great hope. I choose to focus on the latter!

 

But you don’t have the liberty of death because it’s being decided by government policy. A starving person has no agency, no say in how they starve to death. Which is being done to protect the interests of the farmers as a class. You’re making Alesksanders point.

 

People need food. The food is not getting to market.

 

Your risk to yourself is one thing. Your risk to others is something else.

Then don't take it to market. Trump has said the meatpackers must operate, have them give it to people who have no money, a good deal fewer people are involved that way.

 

It's the choice of whether we're the United States of America, or something else entirely. I've made my posts very clear: In the most important battle for democracy in over 100 years: Democrats wilted. You didn't even try like Sweden to think of methods to preserve American democracy. You were like "Nope, to hell with it, everyone inside whether you like it or not."

The problem is: We don't have a central authority in America, you spent 3 years including this pandemic to ridicule the executive branch. And for as much as YOU may fawn over Fauci/Birx, their financial connections(as well as the inconsistencies of the model during the pandemic) means they're not credible voices either.

The second problem is that freedom is the bane of American existence. The difference between WW2, and this pathetic shitshow(which has NO BUSINESS being compared to.), is that they FOUGHT for American freedoms. They toughed it out against a war regime that undermined American existence.

Here, we are told that to fight the virus, we must capsize on everything we believe(and thus proving Putin/Xi right on a silver platter.)

Philosophically, on a freedom and a moral basis, it's as sickening as the coronavirus itself. Personally, it's done untold damage to those who would like to work. We take chances in the public sphere, so that we can live. We're now told that our "livelihood" is to stay within our own homes.

We already lost to the coronavirus. We gave up our values. Our foreign antagonists are going to always be able to say: This is the moment where America's democracy was hollow and meaningless.

 

Every grocery store I've been to is well stocked. Yes, I'm aware of the 'dumping', but we are yet to see the effects. Perhaps people will start to grow their own vegetables - and sell what they don't need to neighbors. Perhaps people will wean themselves from meat and dairy. I'm far from playing doomsdayer at this point.

 

So if I understood you correctly you have abandoned the value of life and have adopted the expediency of being pro death instead. TBH I was not expecting you to have taken that position but obviously I was wrong.

 

You are only risking those who have chosen to accept that risk. If you stay home you are not exposed to the risk of others going out.

We have developed an overly sophisticated supply chain to get the meat from the meat packers to the consumer. It is breaking down. You seem to think the meat packers can put the meat they packed into the trunk of their car and drive it to your house. I don't think so.

 

I knew you couldn't, but resorted to smart assing instead

 

I didn't take a "pro death" position, especially if it's a choice of what we want to die. My body may die, yes. But my values, those will live on. America's values are the most important thing this country has, and the argument over whether to capsize on those values or not, is a sad argument to be having in America.

And to me, it has the reprecussions of a Putin/Xi saying: "For all that talk America gives about democracy and exporting it around the world, even America can deem democracy expendable." It weakens our ability to export it, in the future.(Not that I believe we should, but for those who do, that's not coming back..

 

Your entire position is apathy, what is the point in living when we're all going to die anyways? You make no contribution to either side. It's a smart assing position in of itself.

 

Couldn't do what? I answered the question. You just couldn't deal with the answer so called it "smart ass"

 

Okay, to be even blunter than before: It's not whether we live or die, it's HOW we live or die. Are we going to live our values through to the end, or even perish believing our beliefs(which is valiant.) Or are we going to not only capsize on our values, but tragically STILL die while capsizing on our values?

I happen to think values are too precious to simply throw away, and that I would rather us balance values and safety, rather than be told the only way I can be safe, is to discard everything we believe.