Second Independence Day

 I am sick of wearing a mask, and sick of shutdowns and everything that goes with them.  It is obvious now that there is no danger of covid killing large numbers of the population under the age of 60, and the younger one is, the less vulnerable one is.  That's not to say that young people haven't died, and won't die in the future.  People die of all kinds of things, but rightly pay little attention to the things with a very low chance of causing death.  Even if you tried to protect yourself against every possible cause of death, you would still die, and you would lead a miserable existence in the meantime.  That's why I think we should focus on protecting the most vulnerable, and letting the rest of us judge our own need for safety and willingness to take risks.

When we are finally free of these covid restrictions, we should declare a second national independence day, and we should declare that we will not allow ourselves to be restricted like this in the future in the name of emergency measures.  I'm all for emergency measures implemented by the executive branch (governors and, to a lesser extent, president), but only for two weeks.  That's my limit for emergencies.  After that, unless something is preventing state legislatures and Congress from holding sessions, all executive restrictions should be eliminated and it should be up to the legislatures to decide.  Are they going to have arduous debates and trouble coming up with restrictions that everyone can agree on?  Probably so.  That's why we have legislatures:  because we can't all agree, and we choose representatives to discuss and debate and come to compromise solutions.  There is no excuse for a democracy to have emergency orders lasting a year or more.

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