Brownstone Institute Policy articles feature opinion and analysis of global policy in news, economics, public health, public dialog, and social life. Policy articles are machine-translated into multiple languages.
Government actively steals time. Other peoples’ time is never, ever a consideration. Abject fear is the tool, or in the case of a Census Bureau survey, fear of inundation with “official” emails is the tool. The census bureau (and IRS) actively steal my time. Three years were stolen from the world’s population when fear of a virus overrode rational analysis of its characteristics and effects.
During what government deems crisis, it’s those most willing and eager to flout convention and expert opinion who produce crucial information for the rest of us. If living freely results in sickness and death, then we all know what not to do. But if as was the case with the coronavirus that living freely wasn’t much of a risk at all except for the already very old and already very sick, then those who didn’t flout convention and expert opinion have the information necessary to alter their lifestyles with the information created by the rebellious.
Call it the public-private tyranny partnership. Traditionally coercion and tyranny have been the preserve of states, with citizen consent the exclusive preserve of liberal democratic states. The private sector has been the domain of choice and competition where the customer is always right. Now the citizen must hew to state-dictated morality and the customer must bow to the corporate moral compass.
Lockdowns were the most successful state/corporate policy in world history for convincing the population to give up volition, liberty, and money to the biomedical cartels and all its associated parts. Something that is this monstrously successful for them becomes a model for the future, which they try and try until the population gets utterly and completely sick of it, as they did with the religious wars of old.
We are informed that free speech is dangerous and that it leads to hate, instability, and mayhem. But this disingenuous argument is the argument of tyrants, who gaslight and use words as weapons to disable a free people. Free speech is the salvation of an open, prosperous, and civil society and the embodiment of the sustaining benefits of negative feedback loops.
Recently retired government bureaucrat Anthony Fauci just appeared at a university virtual event titled, “Pandemic Lessons and Role of Faculty in Pandemic Preparedness with Dr. Anthony Fauci.” During the conversation, Fauci, who is now affiliated with Georgetown University, made it clear that he still supports locking down society in the name of a virus, adding that lockdowns are a great tool to forcibly “vaccinate” people.
The COVID-19 train wreck unfolded before their eyes. One senseless government diktat followed another. Close your business. Keep your kids home from school. Stay out of the park. Wear a mask to go into the store. Take a vaccine to keep your job. These edicts destroyed lives. They caused vaccine injuries and deaths, cancelled jobs and education, and tore families apart. They eviscerated civil liberties. Society unravelled.
The people who grasp at the fire of Prometheus are all very frightening. They are brilliant, true. They have the capacity to do great things, and have accomplished them. But it’s easy to see how they can be seduced by their desire for knowledge, the fruit of the tree, access to fire.
This is a time for truth. There is no time to waste. This might be our only choice. It’s not maudlin or exaggerated to say that civilization is at stake. This generation faces a real choice between freedom and barbarism with a digital face. We need to choose wisely and with courage in the face of evil.
