What is democratic government if not a structure set up to serve the well-being of the people? Is it not meant to serve the “common good” and to protect the welfare and safety of the public? Governments are called upon to intrude upon lives for the sake of our general welfare in many ways, taxes for one, but especially for service during wars or pandemics.

Conservative Republicans espouse to prize individual freedom, demanding that no government has a right to exercise a mandate for wearing masks in public or to avoid meeting in gatherings. Yet these are obviously for the safety of the “common good”.

However, in direct contrast, conservative Republicans do want the government to intrude upon private and personal lives far beyond the “common good” by deciding what a woman can do with her own body or whom a person can marry.

If that isn’t hypocrisy, I don’t know what is.