Here’s my reply to people who call you “selfish” for wanting to return to normal life, to liberty, and to making a living:
If you were on a ventilator, fighting for your life from coronavirus, would you take comfort in knowing that millions of people will suffer from a crashing economy? Would you claim that denying them their freedom to produce, think and live life as healthy people somehow ensures your own survival? If your answer is, “No, of course not”, then by what right do you call people who want to return to work morally bad? Or “terrorists”, as some are claiming?
When people call you “selfish”, they usually mean you’re willing to sacrifice other people for the sake of yourself. But isn’t that what the sick person (or his/her loved one) does by insisting that others suffer — and even die, in an unprecedented economic depression? Isn’t it “selfish”, by your definition, to claim, “I’m sick. So you must suffer too”? Or: “I’m probably going to die. So you don’t deserve to live long and prosper, if I can’t.” How SICK is that? How moral is that?
We’re told that unless YOU get sick, you have no moral (or legal) right to demand a return to liberty and production. What about the great majority who recover from coronavirus — and who WANT to return to normal life? Are they morally bad too? If the fact they were sick makes them morally superior, from their sickness alone, then what happens if they ALSO want to make a living again, once they recover?
The people who try to make you feel guilty for wanting a return to life as we knew it are trying to intimidate you. Leftists, like all authoritarians, abusers, and tyrants, are experts at moral intimidation. “How dare you?” they insinuate.
You must turn the tables around on them: “How dare YOU sacrifice other people because you are sick? Or because a loved one is sick? Or because you or I MIGHT get sick?” The ones who want civilization and survival to decline or collapse are the truly morally uncivilized ones. We need to be saying back to them, “How DARE you?”
We’re witnessing today what Ayn Rand called an orgy of sacrifice. It’s virtue-signaling on speed. Some people are suffering with coronavirus, and that’s very sad. Some even die, which is very sad, too. I don’t want to die from it, and I don’t want a loved one to die from it — nor from anything else, for that matter.
However, it’s not a justification for literally ending the world. Bill Gates and Obama’s former aides explicitly want the world shut down for at least 2 years, while scientists work on a vaccine. Dr. Fauci calls it unfortunate and “inconvenient” for millions to lose their livelihoods. Only rich Communists or smug bureaucrats would ever think the world could last that long without an economy. We don’t shut down the world for cancer, heart disease, car accidents or anything else that has killed people in greater numbers.
Yet somehow coronavirus is the thing. Why is that? Because it’s an opportunity they have been waiting to exploit. Never waste a good crisis. And they mean it.
Nobody wants to say these things because they’re afraid of being called morally bad. My advice: Stop being afraid of being called morally bad. In fact: You are morally GOOD if you think and say these things. Please say them. Your and my life depends on it. Coronavirus may kill thousands, and that’s terrible. A collapsed economy and civilization will kill millions, I promise you.
THAT’S the real root of today’s crisis. Until you discover that it’s the people calling you selfish who are morally bad — and that THEY should be shamed — this crisis will continue beyond the confines of any illness.
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