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Thread... My home state of South Dakota continues to be in the news a lot lately in these trying times. Covid deaths are rising, the governor is tweeting about freedom and distrust of government, and many commenters here are making sweeping generalizations 1/8
Truth is, leadership in these times is as difficult as it gets outside wartime, and no governor, or president, or anyone, for that matter, has the magic formula on how to respond... and the state's governor certainly has been out front on her strategy of focusing on freedom 2/8
It's defensible to say leaders should trust their citizens to do the right thing. But that's not always what happens, no matter your definition of "right." Especially when the same leaders simultaneously try to overturn citizen-passed referendums, as is happening now 3/8
I don't question the call for more freedom, but I do question the definition of freedom being called for. Proclaiming that you have a corner on freedom because you don't wear masks or social distance, inherently implying those that do are weak or captive, is misguided & wrong 4/8
And doing it in national ads paid for by federal taxpayers that show your politically ambitious governor and Mount Rushmore in the same light, while she simultaneously tweet-belittles government as the enemy, is a freedom-protected expression, but it's also utter hypocrisy. 5/8
This constant superiority complex declaration of "my" individual freedom being the basis for all existence belies the history and experience of the founders who are often quoted or cited by what I call the freedom-to-infect caucus. These "my freedomers" don't know history. 6/8
The founders who lived and died for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" were indelibly dependent upon one another as they defied the world's mightiest empire that could have easily killed them, one by one, had they not stuck together, sacrificed for one another 7/8
Here's Benjamin Franklin: "We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately." It is neither weakness nor enslavement to come together on collective measures designed to protect you AND your neighbors in a pandemic. Freedom is not selfish . 8/8
