It is troubling to see that retail workers are being shot as a matter of principle by mentally ill vigilantes who are anxious to dine in or who dont want to order curbside while masked. In some cities, armed people demonstrate for their freedom to shop or something.

I dont get it. Thats why I cant explain it. Im from a family of sensible shoppers of whom the most ardent might plan their Black Friday Christmas shopping logistics in advance and set an early alarm. We dont try to force human nature, though.

Maybe its a guy thing a testosterone-fueled attribution bias in reaction to budget stress that evokes some primal male shopping behavior, in mayhem cohorts. Anarchy men who want to shop, "really" want to shop! I call them Tea Partiers, for lack of a more precise term. Theyre typically 40-something demonstrators for a personal freedom not to wear an antiviral mask. Theyre for freedom to shop. They want a debt-free future. But they dont want to pay the cost for underinvesting in pandemic armor a disaster of their own chintzy making. These same advocates for a debt-free future irrationally oppose a $15 Oklahoma minimum wage. When your state is in a budget shortfall, why not churn more income tax dollars into state coffers like nearly half of the U.S. did this year, by increasing the workers minimum wage?

Philosopher Isaiah Berlin described positive liberty as "freedom to" and negative liberty as "freedom from" something. It was all a continuum. And the question being pondered in the hearts of Americans today is, Where is the balancing point? We want to be free to move about the nation, but to do so in a way that doesnt subject us to sloppy DNA from someones over-imagined rights. Vulnerable Americans over age 50 want to shop safely, without being elbowed by paranoid gun-toters who have a feeling and no demonstrable reality that their abstract rights are impinged.

Since the first cave families socialized, there has been a bright line between the freedom to cough and the right not to be coughed upon. It is implicit in the pact under which we submit to governance. We give up the right to go around naked and pee down our legs in trade for the other fellow's giving up his right to go naked and pee down his leg. Its a social compact. The Holy Bible says it like this: "Do unto others that which you would have them do unto you." The Greeks had the golden rule. The Tamils ponder, "Why does one hurt others, knowing what it is to be hurt? Likewise, the Talmud, Hillel, Leviticus. Every ethical religion has a reciprocity maxim. If there is a consensus among anarchists, it is that they ascribe to cooperation and reciprocity.

The Ninth Amendment has a beautiful little regift to the American people: The Saving Clause saves unenumerated rights to the people, as freedoms. That means the Constitution is not all-invasive and we can exercise independent free will about some things. The Ninth Amendment only saves the freedoms of careful and polite citizens of an orderly society. If the Constitution doesnt allocate Freedom from Masks and Freedom to Protect Others Against Pathogens"; individuals decide.

Next up, the 10th Amendment balances powers between federalist supremacy especially in commerce, and state health, safety and welfare. States are charged with using affirmative enumerated police powers to protect health and safety of vulnerable minorities from encroachment by overreaching protesters. As for protesters using the First and Ninth Amendments against constitutionally-mandated policy imperatives, Im placing my bets. Constitution: 1; Protesters: 0.

Kathy Tibbits is a Cherokee citizen, attorney, and artist living at Lake Tenkiller.

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COLUMN: Positive and negative freedoms | Opinion - Duncan Banner