Dear Mr. Stevo,

After reading “When You Assume….,” (and many of your previous articles), I find I must ask a simple question, one I have been unable to resolve on my own and without Miss Tilly.

Since I do not live in the USA, the rules here are different. There are no government mandates about mask-wearing. Each office or company or commercial organization is free to make their own rules. The result is that all grocery stores require masks to be worn or you are not allowed into the store. The same applies on public transport and taxis. There are no exemptions.

Of course, as far as optional shopping is concerned, I now no longer enter other stores that require masks, but I do need to eat, and, since I live in a big city, I need to use public transportation, because I have neither a car nor a bicycle.

But it is not just about me: Food stores that have allowed un-masked customers in have been closed by the police. So if I were to brazen my way in, it could lead to consequences for the owners and employees that I am hesitant to inflict on them. And asking others to don their masks and do my shopping for me cannot be a moral solution.

So my question is simply: Do you believe that, despite the circumstances where I live, the only moral stance is that I refuse to enter stores requiring mask-wearing, and not use public transport? Or is your stance reflective of where you are, and more a symbol of the necessity to start somewhere refusing to go along?

Up to now, it has seemed to me that one must do battle in the best way possible in the circumstances in which one finds oneself, so I do put on a muzzle to buy food. This keeps me strong so I can continue organizing a group to mount a legal challenge to the rampant RT-PCR testing and government imposed restrictions.

Your thought will be most appreciated.

Sincerely,

M.L.

_______

Thank you so much for your note.

The great book of our civilization tells the story of Noah and his family, doing something so out of place for their time. They so adeptly survived through that difficult period and ultimately prospered. The story of Lot tells of a righteous man who left a place that was soon to be destroyed.

His son-in-laws laughed at him and stayed put. We don’t know specifically what happened to them, but contextually it seems like things went poorly for them, as for the other residents of their city. Lot obediently left that wicked place on the brink of destruction.

All human prosperity rests on the ability of a place to provide for its people to be free.

The place you live in is set upon destroying you and destroying itself.

I beg of you to leave that place, but only after you’ve exhausted every option.

I hardly believe a place on this planet exists where not a single manager, not a single business owner, after two or three frank discussions will not allow you passage and accommodation in their business.

Suggest you shop at 6 a.m. before the store opens. Tip the manager for his trouble. Bring him a belated Christmas present. Take him flowers to bring home to his wife. And why not? He’s providing you a service by sticking his neck out for you. He deserves to be recompensed accordingly.

If you put your mind to it, I imagine there are many creative approaches that could prove successful.

If you can’t build these relationships now, in this time of less tension, there may be a time worse than this when you greatly regret not having built those relationships.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I believe all of us can consider these masking orders a blessing to build more effective and supportive human relationships around ourselves. They will make the good times better and the bad time better.

The Police Claim Raises Red Flags

Some questions arise for me around your police claim. It sounds like rumor or media hype. Who are these federal police you speak of? Do they really close down businesses? Can you name these businesses? Have you spoken to these business owners that have closed down and learned whether it was just about face masks or if more was involved?

Having grown up in the world of Chicago politics, I learned to believe none of what I hear and only half of what I see. Knowing journalists and editors around the world, and seeing some of the nonsense that they publish, only strengthens this stance. Every statement in the present milieu that elicits fear or inaction should be analyzed critically. Such a powerful fear campaign is upon us around the globe. Fear is useful and protective, just as skepticism is useful and protective. Unchecked these tools are self-debilitating.

Your claims of police crackdowns raise a red flag for me, and unless you heard them from your brother-in-law the chief of police, or from your three cousins whose shops were closed down because they allowed entry to that pesky elderly man in the neighborhood with emphysema who can’t wear a face mask, I think these stories should raise a red flag for you as well.

The economy of my locale has been so damaged by business owners who obediently closed down, and yet some stay open despite threats. Churches were demanded closed and obediently closed, yet some stay open despite threats. Little of consequence has occurred against those who responded to the threats with courage rather than fear.

Brazening In Is Not An Approach I Advise 

And I do not suggest you brazen your way in. Quite the opposite, I suggest you have a reasonable conversation in reasonable tones with a reasonable person. To brazen your way through a compliance checkpoint generally does not work. It was only after having so many people tell me of their failures at brazening through the compliance checkpoint that I wrote Face Masks in One Lesson in order to provide an alternative that works well. It’s a book about figuring out the rules and having a calm conversation to courageously free yourself from face mask mandates, vaccine mandates, and any other ill that may be pushed upon you. It’s about building muscles for courage in all aspects of life. Building muscles for courage is what I’d most like to encourage in your situation.

Turning To The Courts As The Answer 

I’m uncertain of how best to address the question of morality you ask about. You live in imminent danger. If you choose to commit a slow suicide by staying, please do so, but do not delude yourself, or others, by saying you mean to do something else.

This lawsuit you speak of may take three years to resolve. The courts are one useful tool. They aren’t the single answer. Requiring such long periods for resolution, courts certainly aren’t the answer for your daily life. I applaud you nonetheless for being active on this front.

Permission from some judicial bureaucrat makes your life no more moral or less moral. They can decide legality, but that’s about it. The greatest horrors are committed under the law and are committed against people waiting on the law to protect them.

You are the answer. Your immediate action in your life is the answer.

Jews For The Preservation Of Firearms Ownership 

One of the most rhetorically brazen self-defense groups I know of is called Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership. They permit no man permission to say that they will or will not be armed, for they know well what takes place when a group of people say “Let’s put our faith in man and man’s law and trust that man’s government will protect us.”

Dear reader, I can’t imagine what life you’ve lived that has caused you to have that faith in man’s laws and his institutions. While your perspective may be valid, it has been markedly different from my experience, and I rather enjoy encountering people who challenge my experiences. That being said, I again want to applaud you for fighting that fight, for he who does not fight has no chance of winning. Rather than running immediately, I want to applaud you for investing in the place where you are, but I’m concerned you aren’t doing the most important thing and protecting yourself in the here and now.

In a different era, waiting three years on a lawsuit might have made sense. We don’t live in that era.

You are looking at a cattle car that government means to load you into and your response is “Let’s wait three years for a judge.”

If government doesn’t load you in that cattle car, the society around you will, unless you can figure out how to act now to prevent that.

I Don’t Think You’ve Been Courageous Around The Conversations You’ve Been Having 

Have the hard conversations now. Have them all today: with every business owner you intend to patronize. Do not let the sun set without you having made those twenty or thirty phone calls explaining that you are unable to wear a face mask safely and working something out.

If they are unhelpful, call through the entire phone book.

Commit to never wearing a face mask again. And then make that happen at all cost. Set that standard in your life, make that a necessity, and allow no less.

If you can’t figure out how to go maskless, you shouldn’t be living in the place you are living. No one should. If you comply with the masking, you will comply with far worse.

I don’t want to engage in the time honored activity of mental masturbation by debating the morality of minutia. That is procrastination in disguise.

I won’t lie to you, or to me, by having a conversation about the speck in your eye while you also have a log in your eye.

Exhaust all options. Do it today. If you do that, and truly come up with nothing, plan to have moved by the end of the week. Again, I say that as a last resort, for outside of the openly communist lands, I highly doubt a place exists where a person can’t make it through life maskless by having frank conversations and avoiding establishments that are unwilling to make exceptions.

Some People Find It Easier To Move Than To Have Courageous Conversations, Which Seldom Works Out Well 

Some people find it easier to move than to have those conversations. I discourage behavior like that, for if you do not put an end to that hesitancy now, you will only take it to the next location with you and in that next location, unable to have the hard conversations, you will not be part of the solution, but part of the problem.

Really, where you move to won’t matter all that much if you can’t have those peaceful negotiations with other people in which you go through the process of identifying your boundaries, communicating your boundaries, and defending your boundaries. If you’re someone who can’t do that, you are assured to find a would-be tyrant around every corner in every culture on earth.

And there may be sacrifice for resolving to live by a higher standard and going unmasked. Maybe you have to give up your favorite cookies at one kind of store, maybe you have to travel half an hour out of your way, maybe you have to switch to using a bicycle, maybe there are far greater sacrifices you have to make to preserve your liberty.

But maybe it doesn’t even take that.

I am not asking you to storm Omaha Beach and telling you that doing so will protect your freedoms. I’m not asking you to spend your Christmas in a fetid French trench and whispering in your ear dulce et decorum est telling you that it is sweet and fitting to die for another man’s cause. I am asking you to do a most natural thing for us humans, a thing that modernity prefers to deny us: get to know your shop owner, share your needs with him, and ask him to give you a hand.

That might take some work, but I’m not asking you to put your life on the line to protect your liberty and wellbeing, I’m merely asking you to step out of your comfort zone.

You May Be Guilty Of A Lifetime Of Neglect 

Based on what you’ve written me, you have a lifetime of neglect to make up for. You may have gone a lifetime looking at your store owners, employees, and service providers as anonymous commodities — as modernity suggests we do — an entity to transact with, much like you would transact with an ATM or a gumball machine, only many tend to be kinder and gentler to ATMs and gumball machines for those devices readily give them exactly what they want.

The entities you speak of are humans with human faces and human souls and human prickliness and human foibles and human uncertainties and human qualities and human splendor.

You must treat them as such. If you do so, they may come to treat you as such.

You’ve Made Yourself A Sitting Duck: Be Ready To Move, Or Be Ready For Honest & Courageous Conversation 

Not everyone will give you what you want, but if you are in an urban area, there is an endless supply of people who will, and if you are in a rural area, I can hardly imagine that the federal police congregate outside every store checking for mass compliance.

If so, having travelled to many countries, I’ve never seen that country, but I acknowledge I’ve been wrong many times before and may be wrong now. You may live in the first country I’ve ever heard of like that.

Regardless, whether you live in Los Angeles, Coeur d’Alene, Bohemia, Bahamas, or Inner Mongolia, you are a sitting duck if you can’t get through life maskless.

Far more harm will befall you and those entrusted to you if you can’t navigate the existing scenario.

And it won’t be government’s fault. If you have the eyes to see the evil and the means to escape it, it will be your fault.

If you want the morality of the situation: I say it is immoral to focus on the speck rather than the log.

Please don’t let yourself become another tragic story of a tyrant’s victim because you focused on the speck rather than the log.

It’s not always your oppressor’s fault that you are so oppresable. Have the hard conversations and have them with success or get out of town.

Pull the log out of your eye. Stop wearing a face mask. If at a loss for how to do that, Allan Stevo’s bestselling and critically acclaimed “Face Masks in One Lesson” tells you how. It can be purchased on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Lulu, and many other locations online in print, e-book, and audio format. Bulk orders of ten or more can be placed by contacting [email protected]. 

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