Giridharadas: Americans’ ‘Obsession’ with Freedom Blinds Us to Climate Change, Viruses

RUSH EXCERPT:

GIRIDHARADAS: “> I did the 5%. On the show this week — thank you. On the show this week, we actually dig right into that question, how do we go beyond this? We’re all in this, but there has to be a beyond. One of the fundamental questions to me is what’s going to be our relationship to government, the idea of government after this? We kind of look at it at three levels this week. There’s ay moerdial obsession going back to the Founders, freedom even genocide, freedom obsessed to the point we’re afraid of the government coming for us that we’re blind to other types of threats, whether it’s a virus, malfeasance, climate change, what you have. And there’s also more recent 40-year version on this which is more like Reagan on government problem. There’s a hard version on the right, small militariry version of it but it’s affected many people in the left in this passive sensible in government but I would never go work there. I believe in government but I kind of like don’t like my taxes too high or I use a trust in the Cayman Islands. And then the most recent Trump era twist in this which is the war in government becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, you undermine government, undermine government and it becomes true government sucks because you made it suck by telling everybody it sucks. And I think the most important thing that could come out of this is realizing the government is not the biggest threat to our liberty. It can be a threat to our liberty but we’re threatened by many, many things. And what the government does is protect us from a lot of the other oppressions that wee in America are often quite blind to.”