, Columnist
Covid Pitted Life Against Liberty and Vanquished Both
Philosophers have struggled to find the place where freedom should give way to social responsibility. The virus didn’t help.
Freedom fighters?
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The conflict is right there in the opening words of the document that founded the United States of America. Everyone has a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Few would disagree with Thomas Jefferson’s declaration of principle. But what happens when life and liberty come into conflict?
Plainly, liberty must have some limits. And the coronavirus pandemic, posing a threat to life that can only be fought by collective actions to which some won’t consent, revealed that few in the Western world knew where to put those limits, or even what they meant when they talked of liberty.