From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:
Steve Politi’s Cold Collectivist Attack on Two NJ Gym Businessmen Points to Broader Danger to Our Liberty
Driving is risky, too. We don’t ban driving. We establish traffic laws to minimize the risks, ticket or remove drivers who violate those rules of the road, and then leave people free to go about their travel as long as they follow the rules, each according to his own rational assessment of the risks within the context of all of his other values.
Government’s role in a pandemic is essentially no different. We all know the “social distancing” rules. Is it proper for the government to set voluntary standards in a pandemic? I believe yes. And the government should make available all relevant knowledge as it becomes known. Then it is up to people to be free to make their own choices. Yes, the government can and should hold people who are sick with COVID-19, and know it, accountable. People who are sick should be placed on mandatory quarantine. People should be required to get tested when possible. The proper purpose of government is to secure our individual rights. Just as it is a violation of rights to punch someone in the nose, so it is a violation to knowingly and deliberately infect another with a dangerous infectious disease. Such people should be prosecuted for assault.
But individual rights are not Politi’s concern, so he doesn’t even factor in individual rights. In reply to a Facebook comment by Frank Trumbetti, the other co-owner of Atilis Gym, “We truly believe that if we don’t do this, in the end, we will have zero rights and no say in what happens,” Politi lectured “He might want to read up on how a democracy worksnext time he’s on the treadmill.” [my emphasis]
Politi does seem to know “how a democracy works.” But he might want to read up on how the American concept of government works. The primacy of liberty rights, not voting, is the foundation of Americanism. We do not live in a majority rule–i.e., mob rule–nation. Democracy holds that there are no inalienable individual rights; that a political official can dictate anything, as long as he is elected. A constitutionally limited republic, the American concept, holds that individual rights supersede, and are protected from, any electoral outcome. Democracy is a manifestation of totalitarianism. Politi provides concrete proof of this truth. He says Murphy’s emergency actions are “how a democracy works.” He’s absolutely right: authoritarianism is precisely “how a democracy works.” But that is not how America’s government is supposed to work.
Grandpa My-Opinion-Trumps-Reality misunderstands the role of government yet again. I got a particular chuckle out of:
“People who are sick should be placed on mandatory quarantine.”
Businesses with government sanctioned/issued licenses to allow them to legally operate within their defined boundaries shouldn’t be forced by the same organization that licensed them to cease operations, but it’s okay for the government to place people in mandatory quarantine? Part of me suspects Old Man Mutters-About-Those-People would scream from the top of his gated community if New Jersey enforced a mandatory quarantine.
“Then it is up to people to be free to make their own choices.”
They are free to make their own choices. Unfortunately, in our society and in reality, the government can enforce consequences for those free choices. He means consequence free choices, which is not something anyone is entitled to. Unfortunately ‘Getting Sick’ isn’t an appropriate consequence, because the Gym owner and the misinformed people going to the gym during a pandemic will then create an opportunity to spread a disease to others who chose NOT to expose themselves to the deadly disease.
“The proper purpose of government is to secure our individual rights. Just as it is a violation of rights to punch someone in the nose, so it is a violation to knowingly and deliberately infect another with a dangerous infectious disease.”
I am curious to know how government can secure individual rights when, in Mr. I-Live-In-A-Miasma-Of-Privilege’s world, Government can only react to people getting sick rather than proactively taking measures to ensure individuals don’t get sick. If it can only react… it’s not exactly securing anything, is it? The Huns are at the walls! But I won’t send the Centurians to stop them until only AFTER they break through and start rampaging through the streets of Rome. Because of… FREEDOM.
““We truly believe that if we don’t do this, in the end, we will have zero rights and no say in what happens,””
The owner of the gym and our esteemed Randian do not understand what ‘rights’ are. This quote precedes an entire paragraph where Grampa asserts voting isn’t an individual right. I wonder, then, how ‘Running your State-licensed-and-approved Non-Essential Service during a public health crisis’ is. He, of course, doesn’t explain his rationale and reasoning. All of his “arguements” are just statements he makes as if they are fact. Water is Wet, I don’t need to back that up. Open up non-essential services during a pandemic and expose the greater society to a higher chance of spreading this UNCURABLE PLAGUE, kind of need to back this up with more than just your Objectivist FeeFees.
I’d go through and pick at more of what he wrote, but it’s just more slop, mischaracterizations, misunderstandings, inability see Individuals as parts of a Collective whole, and poor metaphors. Suffice it to say, it’s yet another blog post from a guy who’s oh-so-capable of pointing out what he perceives as faults, but offering no opinion on what’s proper or how government inaction would provide security for Life, Liberty, Property.
As an aside, I’ll leave this here since I know Mr. LaFerrara is a fan of non-Constitutional Supporting documentation. This is vis-a-vis voting and his “Constitutionally Limited Republic”, whatever the expletive he thinks that means:
“The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly regarded as a fundamental article of republican government. It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and establish this right in the Constitution. To have left it open for the occasional regulation of the Congress, would have been improper for the reason just mentioned. To have submitted it to the legislative discretion of the States, would have been improper for the same reason; and for the additional reason that it would have rendered too dependent on the State governments that branch of the federal government which ought to be dependent on the people alone.” – Federalist 52, Publius (Hamilton or Madison)
Oh, hey.
Look at this wonderful example of reacting to a crisis rather than proactively working to avoid it:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-29/every-single-worker-has-covid-at-one-u-s-farm-on-eve-of-harvest
The government is defending my right not to get infected with a ghastly disease because some self-absorbed asshole doesn’t understand science.
Your right to swing your fist, as the saying goes, ends where my nose begins. Your right to engage in other behavior in public ends where it starts to pose a serious danger to me.
Driving is risky, too. We don’t ban driving.
Libertarians need to stop making stupid analogies which show they don’t understand the issue. When was the last time you caught a car crash from being in the same room with somebody who had had one?