There is a word for why we wear masks, wrote Michael Tomasky in The New York Times: "One of the key authors of the Western concept of freedom is John Stuart Mill. In ‘On Liberty,’ he wrote that liberty (or freedom) means ‘doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow, without impediment from our fellow creatures, as long as what we do does not harm them even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse or wrong.’”
Note the clause “as long as what we do does not harm them.” He tossed that in there almost as a given — indeed, it is a given. This is a standard definition of freedom.
“Freedom emphatically does not include the freedom to get someone else sick. It does not include the freedom to refuse to wear a mask in the grocery store, sneeze on someone in the produce section and give him the virus. That’s not freedom for the person who is sneezed upon. For that person, the first person’s “freedom” means chains — potential illness and even perhaps a death sentence. No society can function on that definition of freedom.”
To all who deem mask-wearing as inhibiting personal freedom, I offer the originalists' definition of the word. “Freedom means the freedom not to get infected by those who refuse to mask up. Even John Stuart Mill would have agreed.”
Louise Lazur
Anchorage
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