Just a thought on reading the article on Lauren Libby’s aggressive conservative agenda push. Her leadership PAC is named “Fight For Freedom.” Such a title would be appropriate were we citizens of Russia, North Korea or any of another smaller authoritarian country, but in the United States one might ask: Freedom from what? We are known throughout the world as the land of the free. No one is jailed for speaking their mind; we are able to be born into poverty and through hard work rise above our beginnings; we can travel throughout the world at will and for the most part determine our own destinies.

What Libby fails to understand is the need for order, limits and mutual concern to be able to maintain a free and just society. Who is to know if COVID restrictions prevented a national tragedy or simply infringed upon our individual freedom. Best we err on the side of caution and follow previously proven methods of managing a threat to the health of millions. Who among us does not know someone who died or was seriously sickened due to COVID. Had we not followed the prescribed distancing, masking and vaccinations who knows how many more would have been lost?

There is a balance that must be found in a functioning democracy between individual freedoms and the common good that is vital to maintaining the freedoms we already enjoy that Libby, in her aggressive will to upend a functioning society, does not seem to get. A narrow focus on the individual rather than the whole will lead to chaos and loss of freedom for the whole.

Leaders whose focus is confined to their own personal views about what is best for themselves without the understanding of how the actions relate to the health of the whole will ultimately lead us to crash and burn.

Ann Roberts

Whitefield