Liberty, Freedom, America. Synonymous.
Terrorist attack, Counter-terrorism, "Patriot Act."
AND
Pandemic, Social Distancing, Shelter at Home. Events that happened and reactions that came.
We love our freedoms and our liberty in America. We love the fact that people here enjoy more personal freedom and more civil liberties than anywhere else in the world.
But huge global events can put a dent in our freedoms. We all remember 9-11. And after that, we endured less personal freedom and tacitly accepted a loss of privacy and more invasive, intrusive surveillance of our lives and activities from our government to "prevent another act of large scale terrorism."
And even the most ardent, liberty loving right-winger and the most strident civil libertarian liberal must agree on one thing: The onerous, unprecedented civil surveillance that sprung from the global war on terrorism after 9-11 HAS, at a minimum, been effective at helping prevent another major terrorist attack on our homeland.
But at what cost--what is the price to pay for this and has it been worth it?
I believe most would say the answer to that is that "YES--it has been worth the cost"
Now we have the Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic upending our way of life. COVID-19 has changed the world, our country, and our community locally.
We are enduring unprecedented financial consequences. We're stuck at home. Life for many has radically changed. Businesses are closed. Beaches are closed. Unemployment is spiking. Trillions of dollars we do not have are being printed and spent nationwide to confront the crisis. Tens of thousands of Americans have died from this disease, while experts struggle to ramp up a response.
Political timelines and artificial deadlines are now clashing with public health realities and epidemiologists' recommendations for rationally "opening" our country again.
And locally, by and large, this struggle between public health realities and economic despair will be on display on April 28th when the Escambia Board of County Commissioners will vote to either open our beach in a limited way----or we vote to keep it closed.
Passionate voices of support and opposition are aligning on both sides of this topic--- and this decision will be difficult.
Nationally and yes, even locally, decisions of immense consequence are coming........soon.
