Dear Editor
In your 10DEC20 opinion, you stated that "Surely, people in their right minds cannot think that our government would intentionally provide something that is not safe or in- the best interest of our country as a whole". One need only look to the Tuskegee Syphillis Study which concluded back in 1972 to see the fallacy of this opinion.
In this study, our government studied the Syphilis (STD) rate in southern, African-American men over a period of forty years with the promise of free medical care. Many were never given treatment, never told of their status, or given placebos in place of penicillin, which was needed to cure the disease.
These actions were perpetrated in this community under the guise of ''for your own good and for your best interest".
We can see that government can and will intentionally force us to do something that is not in our best interest or for the greater good. When our free choice, our freedom, is replaced by a carrot (coercion) and stick (force) as your guest columnist Tim Kalich advocates, then we have spiraled into tyranny.
The famed author C.S. Lewis says it best, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience".
Joe Garner Jr.
Magee, MS
