https://ctmirror.org/2023/06/14/ct-maga-gun-lobby-mass-shootings-rationalization/
Upon reading an incoherent, nonsensical, easily refuted, stupid rant about how gun control is a good idea, I did actually stumble upon something useful.
The douche, Riju Das, who is inexplicably a lawyer, who I wouldn't recommend anybody facing criminal charges to represent you, did try to evoke the Covid pandemic in his stupid rant about gun control.
This is great because this is illustrative of why our cultural fissur is taking place.
"Give me liberty, or give me death."
Mr. Das mocked that famous quote from Patrick Henry in both contexts.
"There is no liberty without life." he says, as if that's a profound statement.
The moronic ideas that he stated aren't unfamiliar.
Still, what was presented was a fundamental conflict of values -- is liberty more important than your life; or, is your life the most important thing?
The argument against my position on the right to bear arms, and my opinion that the lockdowns shouldn't have ever happened during Covid, despite a lot of other factors and points being relevant, bore down to one value, "There are things that are more important than my life. There are things that are more important than your life."
How about the age old question of whether you would rather die on your feet or live on your knees?
The pandemic proved that billions of people would rather be on their knees, being throat fucked by anybody who demanded it, and take it until they died of something that didn't consciously scare them, until their dying day so long as they felt relatively safe. On the other side, there were people who wouldn't get on their knees and get throat fucked into submission. Some of us think that a principle isn't a principle until it costs you something.
I personally think that, if you don't have anything that you're willing to die for, you don't have anything to live for. If your life is the most important thing to you, you're not a great person, everybody should deny you sex, and you should be shamed and scorned.
There are ideas that are more important than life.
If humanity can't live with liberty, I sincerely hope that we all die sooner than later.
I don't believe that humanity can't live without liberty. I think that we thrive with liberty; and, I have the receipts to back that up.
Nonetheless, the point remains that Patrick Henry's quote was entirely correct in my book.
A principle isn't a principle until it costs you something. It's better to die on your feet than live on your knees. Your life, and my life, aren't precious until other people value us. It would be better that the entire human race die off than it would be for all of us to live in chains.