Where do you draw the line between standing up for your beliefs and caving in to the dictates of someone else? At what point will you say, “Enough!” How far will you back up, hoping that you will not ever have to stand your ground and resist the demands that are being put on you?

This is the question that people have to answer. How far indeed?

If you give ground on one issue in order to avoid trouble, then you are more likely to give ground on another related issue, again, to avoid trouble. The problem is, that if you give up enough, sooner or later you will find that you have nothing left. Benjamin Franklin said it so well 265 years ago:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

I might restate this, as others have, that those who try to purchase temporary safety at the expense of necessary liberty will eventually find that they have lost both liberty and safety. Such is the dilemma today concerning the furor over face masks to (supposedly) mitigate against the “dread pestilence” of Covid-19.

Allan Stevo has this to say about the progression of refusing to hold your ground. In an article on Lew Rockwell, he writes,

“Because if you will wear the face mask, then you will take the vaccine. If you will wear the face mask, you will believe the election results. If you will wear the face mask, you will accept the lockdown. If you will wear the face mask, you will let your mother die alone. If you will wear the face mask, you will let your son be buried with no funeral. If you will wear the face mask, when historians one day call it necessary and normal, you will agree. If you will wear the face mask, then 2020 will be tolerable to you, and you will learn to adapt to the worst in humanity, rather than to demand the best.”

“When you wear the face mask, you tell the world that you are someone who will not identify his boundaries, communicate his boundaries, or defend his boundaries. You are instead someone with flexible boundaries, waiting for the right confidence man to walk all over you.”

Where is your line in the sand? At what point do you refuse to back up any further, regardless of the consequences? I am still sorting this out for myself on many fronts, but of one thing I am sure–if I am ordered to wear a mask by some government agent or agency under pain of punishment, then I will tell them to do their worst. If the governor of Montana decides to issue an edict requiring that everyone wear a face mask, then I will defy him on the constitutional grounds that he does not have that authority.

Greg Gianforte, take note! I will not comply. My face is my face and no one will tell me to cover it up.