They always find some emergency or danger which requires them to suspend the rights of some unpopular group. Before you know, protected rights are gone for everyone and there’s no going back. From el gato malo at boriquagato.substack.com:
failure to rotate shapes is how you get cornered
“the ends justify the means.”
i’m not sure there is a more blood soaked epigram in all of human history.
“we did bad stuff to get good outcomes.”
it’s the rock upon which logic and golden rules founder and against which fearful people clamor to smash themselves and their rights to flinders in pursuit of “a little safety.”
it defends the outrages of demagogues and the depredations of dictators.
it’s WHY states and statists conjure endless cavalcades of hobgoblins to terrorize the demos.
and not all of them are imaginary.
“with an iron paw, he kept the mice from our pantry.”
“we don’t care if it’s mussolini so long as the streets are safe and the trains run on time!”
this seems a far fetched sort of submission right after the outlandish object lesson of covid policy and its wanton abuse of emergency powers, but humans never really learn anything and seem eternally ready to step once more upon the selfsame rake that oh so recently hit them in the face, especially if “well, this time, it’s our rake.”
At least the planes would function and no trains would derail under Gatito, not so much under Chairman Meow.
Looking back maybe the PMRC (Parents Musical Resource Center) was the beginning of the neo Puritan movement of remove all risk from life and safety uber alles?
It backfired as obscure bands got some free press and no parental advisory sticker no buy was our mantra.
Frank Zappa pwned and put a stop to the hysteria before congress in a moment of EPIC greatness just as he did on a 1986 episode of Crossfire on Pure Bolshevik Soviet.
I would pick up the censored version of the early rap just to LMFAO and watch Scarface on network teevee with Pappy until we were literally rolling on the floor.
Freedom isn’t for everyone and some want mommygov to keep them safe.
Eisenhower said it best about if you want security then go to prison and even there bad things can happen.
The adage that the desired end result justifies the means to get there disguises that the means is the end. If you surrender your freedom and rights to later be free and have protected rights you actually lose what you thought you were gaining and you agreed to it. It is not possible to use tyranny to bring people to freedom.
Chad