In the US, there is a very clear and present danger by those who consistently claim that COVID-19 is not a pandemic, but a conspiracy to bring the population under control by requesting mask use. Others, more disappointingly, believe that the whole pandemic is nothing more than an attempt to slander the current US President Donald Trump. Such thinking is a danger to public health and its mental well being.
To those that would deny simple material reality and scientific knowledge, the issue is about freedom. In their eyes, totalitarianism can come simply from requesting the people wear masks in public spaces. Businesses mandated to make that requirement are subjected to obnoxious public outbursts of self-righteous ignorance. It seems that those who so adamantly defend private property and one’s right to do with it as they please, are the first to demand that someone else’s conform to their preferences.
Now it’s one thing for Americans to perpetuate such nonsense in their own country. It’s their right to argue and throw temper tantrums in place of rational debate over mask use. It is quite another to travel to someone else’s country and make such demands. But that’s exactly what has happened here in Canada.
During the lockdown of the border between the US and Canada, 16,070 Americans attempted to cross into Canada full well-knowing that the lockdown was in effect. In another case, an American who had travel permission, because they had property in Alaska, abused his right to go sightseeing. He was caught in Banff after violating the Quarantine Act. He could be imprisoned for six months and fined as much as $560,000.
All of this happened because Americans felt that they could do whatever they wanted in someone else’s country. The arrogance of such a mentality is beyond reason. Americans feel that they can go to another person’s country and demand that the law not apply to them. They, as a guest in another country, act as if they own the place. It’s one thing to demand to do what you want in your own home, it is another to demand it in another’s.
For a country so firmly in defense of private property rights, they seem to have no respect for other’s property.
JASON UNRUHE 