In the sign, it reads, “Give me liberty or give me COVID 19,”. This quote couldn’t help but bring me back to what Patrick Henry, an anti-federalist, said: “Give me liberty, or give me death!”. He said these powerful and memorable words as the Virginia convention were deciding whether to send troops to fight in the Revolutionary War.

In John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government (1689), he wrote about a Social Contract which is the willingness of the people to give up some of their rights to the government in order to protect others such as life, liberty, and property which are known as the natural rights.

Stay-at-home protestors are putting other people’s health at risk and they believe that they are protesting an infringement of their right to liberty. From what I saw of the live footage of them storming into Michigan state Capitol they were not even taking the proper precautions necessary such as wearing masks. Not only were they not taking proper precautions, but they were in fact armed going into the statehouse. Straight from her Twitter Senator Dayna Polehanki said “Some of my colleagues who own bulletproof vests are wearing them. I have never appreciated our Sergeants-at-Arms more than today,”.

President Trump used his “wartime powers” to increase the manufacture and distribution of face masks and ventilators. This may suggest to many that we are at war, with a silent enemy that has attacked the whole world.

This mentality of feeling as though they are fighting a war makes people lose sight of how the government is trying to protect us, which is their one true job according to our founding fathers. Going out to the streets to protest in a worldwide pandemic is not a fight for liberty, it is a chance to spread the virus they desperately hate.