Masks: Oppression Or Freedom?

It has come to this: a medical mask.  A medical mask is the symbol of the pandemic. It defines one’s pandemic politics, either  a commitment to keeping one safe and ending the Covid-19 pandemic or a tyrannous symbol of government muzzling and suppressing free people.

With state and local governments ordering individuals to wear a mask when outside or in confined areas, and businesses following suit, an aggrieved minority warn a socialistic cabal are using the pandemic as the excuse to overturn their liberty.

But they have failed to show how in fact their freedoms have been diminished.

In The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper, columnist Cheryl K. Chumley said to requirements on using masks, “Let the -- hopefully! -- lawsuits against the mask Nazis begin.”

Forcing the use of face masks violates civil rights, she argues, and “seems a blatant violation of an individual’s right to choose -- of an individual’s right to self-govern. America, after all, isn’t a nation founded on collectivism, but rather individualism -- on the rights of individuals to exercise their God-given authorities, absent government tinkering and intrusion. What gives government the authority to cover their faces?”

Her complaint conveniently ignores the powers government constitutionally has to protect human health.  That power is established in the preamble of the U.S. Constitution which calls for promoting “the general welfare.”

While polls show most Americans willing to take the needed steps to control and stem the pandemic -- including a go-slow attitude on aggressively restarting the economy -- the confrontations over using masks or taking other Covid-19 protections are growing. And sometimes, the confrontations  are deadly.

In Michigan, a woman was arrested  after refusing to leave a grocer’s for not wearing a mask. She was accused of assaulting the worker and spitting on police. 

Also in Michigan a man was arrested after he wiped his face on a store worker’s shirt. He had been asked to leave for not wearing a mask..

In Oklahoma City four people were shot at a McDonald’s when a customer refused to leave the dining area which was closed to prevent Covid-19 spread.

Again in Michigan, tragically, Calvin Munerlyn of Flint, a local security guard and the father of nine children, was murdered after arguing with a store customer who was not wearing a mask.

This is in addition to a protester in Connecticut who painted this message on his car: “Your health is not more important than my liberties.” Or a protester in Tennessee seen with a sign saying, “Sacrifice the weak.” 

Conservative commentator Bill Kristol has said of all these protests, “refusing to wear masks seems more a product of tribal conformism than robust individualism.” 

The anti-mask, anti-protection protesters show no actual concern for the economy. They almost never mention getting people back to work or protecting businesses from collapse.

Business people who call for easing restrictions, on the other hand, generally go out of their way to pledge taking all steps needed to protect health -- ensuring social distancing, sanitizing and disinfecting work surfaces, and, yes, wearing masks -- so long as they can get back to work.

The anti-mask protesters have a different agenda, one based on their political bias of anger and complaint.

There has always been a  group, as Kristol suggested a tribe, focused on their sense of grievance. To them, masks are one more attempt to belittle them, abuse them, impoverish them.  Masks are another tool used by big business, college-educated “elites” and especially the government to control them, seize their freedoms. In fact, to many protestors, Covid-19 is either phony or a deliberate creation to suppress them. 

Yet, which of their freedoms have been abused? Certainly not the right to assembly, as protests at state Capitols show. Not freedom of speech. Not even freedom of worship. One may have to exercise these rights in different ways, but they are still being exercised.

Ironically, the protesters demanding their so-called infringed freedoms be protected could see restrictions continue far longer because of their actions. If their defiance of current protections and restrictions result in ongoing increases in Covid-19 cases, or helps fuel a second wave of infections later on, it could mean we are stuck wearing a mask far longer than we might wish.

So, wearing a mask now might be the key to economic normality, indeed to protect our freedoms, in the future. Thus, is the mask is liberty’s new flag?