A short thread on freedom:

Since the Enlightenment, the philosophical foundation of Western civilization has been the idea that freedom is paramount and universal. The role of government is to maximize freedom and it is the right of all to enjoy freedom.
However, we accept specific and well-defined restrictions on freedom when doing so maximizes freedom overall. In a cost-benefit analysis, we may see that limiting some freedoms may actually increase overall freedoms at a societal level.
For example, my right to do as I please ends at your right to physical security and ownership of personal property. Being physically secure from others is the basis of personal freedom.
This logic, however, is distorted when it is used to dismiss those fighting for the preservation of freedom in covid times as selfish ignoramuses ("but muh Freedom!"). Their argument is that lockdowns are a way of securing freedom (from death and sickness).
The reality, however, is that lockdowns and other NPIs have not been shown to increase these freedoms. There is still zero evidence to suggest that even a single human life has been saved through lockdowns.

oldnormalontario.substack.com/p/simon-fraser…
In short, no government has produced a cost-benefit analysis showing that curtailing our freedoms has somehow led to more freedom overall, now or in the future.
Clearly we are all less free than we were 18 months ago. Would we have been freer with tighter restrictions on our freedoms? How would that make logical sense?
If we accept that:

A) We are now less free

And

B) lockdowns have done nothing to promote freedom by preserving and extending human life

Then the logical conclusion is that our freedoms, in effect, have been stolen.
Our freedoms were not curtailed for the maximization of freedom overall, now or in the future. Therefore, in the tradition of Western Enlightenment thinking, our rights have been stolen and any attempt to continue this theft is illegitimate and unethical.

End.

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