Calls for general amnesty or accusations that those of us who got things right only did so through luck are lame attempts at self-absolution. To apply the logic of the confessional: there can be no reconciliation without contrition and firm purpose of amendment. It is important then to demand the attitude of mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa even among the most stubborn.
Many of those who claim to represent science are no longer objective. Science educators teach orthodoxy. Science communicators openly engage in blatant marketing campaigns. Scientific consensuses are manufactured when needed. All of these components in how scientific knowledge is disseminated and how trust in science is built are now tools to advance and support official policy. All have become ghosts of what they used to be.
We must judge the authorities all over the world who relentlessly pumped out panic-laden, often knowingly false propaganda during the past three years, in order to provoke fear and despair, while deliberately silencing and censoring all attempts at promoting a more balanced and healthy view; how they stifled critical thinking. And it is in this light that we must view the disastrous consequences of this conduct, and how it first and foremost harmed the young, the poor; our smallest brethren.
Today there are millions of people across the globe (some of them comprising the ranks of those associated with Brownstone Institute) who have chosen to do battle against the technocrats who believe that they are invincible. The latter have miscalculated their anticipated triumph in an irreparable manner, however.
The myth of the hero does not teach us to eradicate life’s pains and risks in pursuit of only comfort and safety. That is the doctrine of the animal. Rather, the myth of the hero shows us that it is necessary to embrace suffering and risk in order to experience life’s miracle; and that, for such a transcendent reward — for such excellence — that is a price worth paying.
How can we go back to living in just one world? Was it all an illusion in the first place? Is it just that the veil has been drawn back, and now we (or I) see the true horror of reality? What took me so long? How I long for a reconciliation of those two worlds, where there is a shared understanding of truth, where we can at least confront problems together, on the same side. Until something changes, I must try to be a citizen of these two mutually exclusive worlds.
The Godly path to Adam Smith’s liberal plan is a path away from cultishness. Can liberalism be sustained in a world of waning belief in God? Tocqueville said that the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion depend on one another. Hayek ended The Fatal Conceit asking whether people in an age of waning theism will not be inclined to find meaning and validation in cultish politics.
My experience in academia and many other realms of life has shown me that the desire to humiliate others and thus putatively raise one’s cache of social capital—an impulse I can honestly say I’ve never quite understood—is a cardinal trait of many human beings, most of whom are desperately and futilely trying to use these public demonstrations of would-be dominance to very fill large affective holes within their spiritually empty selves.
Covid denier, climate denier, election denier, science denier – are all bandied about to immediately end debate, tar any difference of opinion as literally insane, and depict anyone who ever disagrees with you as stupid and evil. This epithet is now even being used pre-emptively to makes sure that no matter what anyone who now or ever questions the move to ban gas stoves will not be doing so based on facts or logic but because of their “gas stove denialism.”
From legend and literature, this is how things usually are presented, not with one inviting temptation to go along but rather with three chances to comply, each with assurance that all will be well if we just give up our recalcitrant desire to think and act for ourselves. At each stage, every one of us faces enormous pressure, and not just from government but also from family, friends, and coworkers.
By closing the church door to the unvaccinated, many were embracing a malicious apostasy that we have not seen since Franco. From July 2021 to mid-2022, vaccine passports were used in churches loyal to the state. What it meant was someone could go to church with the flu, hepatitis, syphilis, herpes, and early onset of Ebola, if they had their Covid Vaccination Certificate.
Moral courage is risky: it has a price, which is why it is called courage. As Aristotle famously declared, “Courage is the first virtue because it makes all other virtues possible.” If that is true, and it is, then the power to reverse attempts to remake Western society into one devoid of the fundamental moral values that enable all individuals to thrive peacefully lies ultimately – and only – within each individual.
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