// 30.11.2022

In the current situation of the ongoing pandemic, the question of balancing personal rights, liberty, and public safety remains as relevant as ever. The correlation between the individual and the public good continues to be a matter of debate.

The danger of violating this balance seems very real, since the champions of so-called "public safety" are willing to enslave not only themselves, but also those who oppose such actions to the state. And the question is not that anyone is against ensuring the conditions of social security in all the usual senses of the concept. The point is that the state is always tempted to use the transfer by citizens of some of their rights to ensure public safety, for their own and not always noble purposes.

Populism of "simple solutions", of coercion, of segregation on the basis of the presence or absence of risk of danger, always seems to be the most rational solution for the frenzied majority.

Meanwhile, it is obvious that simple solutions to balancing individual rights and the public good have never been and never will be. And it seems perfectly real that the risk of government abuse is no less (or even obviously more) dangerous than almost any arbitrary danger. The rationale for this is that any dangers threatening humanity are objectively existing phenomena, often independent of human will (natural and sometimes man-made disasters, epidemics and pandemics). These dangers do not have their own desires and aspirations and do not seek to enslave people, and are in fact evolutionary challenges facing humanity as a whole.

The state as an institution is an entirely different in nature. And very often this institution is afflicted and bruised by the most common human vices and base aspirations, which, being unconstrained by other social and social institutions, cause the state to violate and appropriate all human and civil rights and freedoms.

This is why the violation of the balance by the state will invariably provoke a response of resistance from the dissenting part of society.