Much has been made about Shelley Luther, the Texas woman who defied the Governor’s lockdown orders and opened up her salon.
Many are touting her as a hero because she calculated that she would rather risk working and feeding her kids than not working and potentially running completely out of money.
What I thought was most concerning was how the judge, Eric Moye, handled the proceedings. In short, the alternative he gave Luther was for her to say what he wanted her to say or go to jail.
Jail is for actions that are against the law. For example, you steal something, and you may go to jail. You commit this action, you receive that action.
But what Judge Moye did was to give Luther the opportunity to avoid jail if she said what he wanted her to say:
“If you would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that your actions were selfish, putting your own interests ahead of the community in which you live.”
He went on to say, “That you now see the error of your ways.”
“That you own an apology to the elected officials who you disrespected.”
First off, this is easy for him to say. He’s making his $140,000, no matter what happens. It’s been easy for all of these government employees to tell those out of work to stay home and lock down.
Second, I try to put myself in her shoes, and I’m afraid I would have resisted simply because I refuse to let someone else determine what I need to think or say. In fact, if I had agreed, I may have refused to say what he wanted, just to assert my own freedom.
She broke the law, and he was giving her a way to avoid jail. In that regard, I guess you could say he was being kind.
However, America is simply not a place where people have to read pre-written confessions like a terrorist may give a hostage. And there’s no way I would do it to avoid jail, or anything else.
But then, that’s really what this coronavirus lockdown is becoming all about, isn’t it. Some of us refuse to cower in our homes. We refuse to let our lives go by, living in fear.
Some of us want to take this thing head on. If we get it, we get it. And we’ll do our best to recover. And if we recover, we’ll have some immunity. If not, then… well, we all have a time to go.
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