Interesting that you would say it that way in your last paragraph of that post. I think we see along the same lines. I just wrote this in another thread on the concept of Coronavirus "Herd Immunity":
The resistance of many to embracing the concept of “herd immunity” is not surprising. It isn’t just the conflict between a non-battlefield medical point of view that means everyone must be saved all the time everywhere and an executive view that choices must be made (more of a battlefield triage) and that the choice between destroying an economy and/or industry and creating misery on a large scale due to poverty and hunger outweighs the number of lives that might be saved by draconian measures.
I have been writing lately of the unpleasant tendency in our society (fostered almost entirely by the Left) to REQUIRE all people be “safe” all the time, in everything.
- What you eat.
- You can’t eat things that are bad from you. Outlaw sugary drinks. Tax alcohol and tobacco. Mandate nutrition information.
- What you see.
- You can’t see a statue. You can’t see a flag. You can’t watch a video someone else doesn’t agree with. You can’t view a sign that offends someone.
- What you hear.
- Hearing hateful or stupid people is discouraged and outlawed. De-platform those whose opinions are thought to be bad. Shut down campus discourse at a lecture. People cannot have their feelings hurt, no matter if what hurts them is the truth.
- What you do.
- Don’t drive without a seatbelt. Wear a helmet. Ban monkey bars. Make safety regulations so onerous that products become so expensive people won’t buy or use them.
It is all interrelated.
But most of all, it becomes a Manichean choice between accepting that WE as humans control EVERYTHING that happens to us, and accepting that Nature (God) has a hand it it.
This is a most difficult conflict for Leftists who believe Man is God, and that everything can be controlled by our hand.
This is a most difficult conflict for Leftists who believe Man is God, and that everything can be controlled by our hand. The revolution Rousseau inspired was murderously anticlerical as was the Spanish revolution of the 1930s, the Bolshevik revolution, Castro's revolution, and Pol Pot's.
Why so? The answer can be found in a cursory reading (although it deserves lifetime study) of the book of Genesis which tells us that the nature of man is eternally at war with God because man would be God.
Conservatism in its most basic and elemental state does not share leftist belief in the perfectibility of man, rather, Christian conservatives believe that man is not in need of collective guidance in his habits because he will somehow be transformed if he stops drinking sugar drinks, rather, because he is essentially a flawed sinner he is in need of salvation or redemption rather than education. Education is all well and good but the needs of moral man, the needs of the soul which ultimately rule politics, is spiritual and humbling.
Incidentally, the Judeo-Christian belief system, especially the Christian side of it, holds that man is saved retail on an individual basis. It is significant that there is no mass salvation, there is no "general will" to repent that only comes, often painfully, to the individual in an interaction between man and God.
It was a gift of God that our forefathers held the Judeo-Christian view of the fallen state of man and were soberly aware of his imperfectibility. Hence they framed a government to deal with man's imperfectibility both when he attempts to rule as a mob or when he attempts to rule as an elite.
