Having a right doesn't mean you must exercise it; that would be an obligation. Some rights can be exercised selfishly.
You may have a right to party so hard that you need an ambulance ride to the emergency room to save your life, and then you can't pay for it so our taxes bail you out. But it's personally dangerous as well as selfish toward your community.
Likewise you may have a right to large mask-less indoor gatherings during a pandemic, and we'll spend lives and treasure to help you when you get sick. But you could also just exercise some personal restraint for a few more months instead of risking your and our health as well as prolonging the economic damage. The government issuing lockdowns or curfews to help with the pandemic is just codifying what we should already be doing.
Contrast that with the PATRIOT Act and other surveillance overreach. If, after 9/11, the U.S. were on the brink of destruction, infiltrated at all levels of society by mustache-twirling Arab-looking extremists, then racial profiling and invasive surveillance of its own citizens might seem necessary. But it was clear then, as it is now, that those weren't the reality. So enacting those programs was wasteful government overreach at best, more likely intentional erosion of civil liberties.
In the pandemic case, it benefits you and everyone and the government for you not to use right of assembly for a few months. In the 9/11 case, it benefits only the government for you to have diminished privacy forever. See the difference?
> If, after 9/11, the U.S. were on the brink of destruction, infiltrated at all levels of society by mustache-twirling Arab-looking extremists, then racial profiling and invasive surveillance of its own citizens might seem necessary
The problem of course, is that there were people who actually believed this, and while I think the sentiment has died down, I still believe some of the paranoia survives.
Having a right doesn't mean you must exercise it; that would be an obligation. Some rights can be exercised selfishly.
You may have a right to party so hard that you need an ambulance ride to the emergency room to save your life, and then you can't pay for it so our taxes bail you out. But it's personally dangerous as well as selfish toward your community.
Likewise you may have a right to large mask-less indoor gatherings during a pandemic, and we'll spend lives and treasure to help you when you get sick. But you could also just exercise some personal restraint for a few more months instead of risking your and our health as well as prolonging the economic damage. The government issuing lockdowns or curfews to help with the pandemic is just codifying what we should already be doing.
Contrast that with the PATRIOT Act and other surveillance overreach. If, after 9/11, the U.S. were on the brink of destruction, infiltrated at all levels of society by mustache-twirling Arab-looking extremists, then racial profiling and invasive surveillance of its own citizens might seem necessary. But it was clear then, as it is now, that those weren't the reality. So enacting those programs was wasteful government overreach at best, more likely intentional erosion of civil liberties.
In the pandemic case, it benefits you and everyone and the government for you not to use right of assembly for a few months. In the 9/11 case, it benefits only the government for you to have diminished privacy forever. See the difference?