How we navigate the end of mandates determines whether we win our freedom or whether we allow our leaders to normalize a Brave New World with conditional rights that can be turned off again during the next “emergency”.
Ending Mandates Does Not Strip Government of the Ability to Do This Again Read More
Freedom matters—even in a pandemic. Without freedom, elderly people may spend their remaining time on earth isolated from their loved ones, and we know that social isolation kills. Without freedom, people may lose not only their livelihoods but the momentum and opportunity to build careers as flight attendants, orchestra musicians, chefs, or scientists working on viruses. Without freedom, children may lose important and irretrievable experiences and milestones. Without freedom, life becomes a shadow of itself.
The lockdowns were and are an intolerable attack on property rights, the freedom of association, free enterprise, and basic rights of trade and exchange that have been a bedrock of a thriving economy since the ancient world. They were also without precedent on this scale. We need a clear statement from the top that this was wrong, and did not achieve the aims. A well-constructed reparations package would make the point.
There is nothing more central to the idea and practice of freedom than bodily autonomy. It is the basal freedom from which all others are derived. Without it—as the history of slavery starkly reminds us—all other liberties are comparatively ornamental.
BJ Dichter is one of the organizers of the Canadian Truckers for Freedom Convoy and its media spokesman. We had an opportunity to speak with him earlier this week about the situation in Ottawa, the convoy’s strategy and about some of the political elements that are at play as this extremely fluid situation makes headlines and continues to inspire people all over the world.
“The Honking Will Continue”: A Conversation With BJ Dichter Read More
The destruction wrought by the lockdowns has many fathers—computer-modelers who terrified federal policymakers with guesses dressed up as certainties; health officials who were given the levers of government without any sense of or care for unintended consequences; governors who ruled by executive fiat.
Freedom is not an option, despite what they say. It is not something granted to us by the powerful at their discretion. It is a universal right, one protected only by a culture that loves it, institutions that guard it, and people who fight for it. We can get there. We are in a position to help prove this, to rebuild, and work for a world in which nothing like this ever happens again.
If progressives were still progressives they would be fighting bio-fascism with every cell in their body. Some are, but most are not.
Unfortunately, sitting atop the world’s largest stash of infectious disease research money, with an annual NIAID budget of over $6 billion, Dr. Fauci was able to command the nation’s pandemic strategy with little opposition from other infectious disease scientists.
The other day I see this guy with a little kid on a playground. Both masked up. Only the two of them, in the open air, masked. The kid had two masks, no, three. Different colors. The fear’s still there. But people could get over it. Even in California.
While conservatives were properly disgusted by the $1.9 trillion coronavirus “rescue plan” signed into law by President Biden in 2021, they were rather quiet in 2020 when a $2.9 trillion Cares Act was passed. Please keep in mind that absent this massive bit of wealth redistribution, there’s no way lockdowns around the country could have lasted even two weeks, let alone many months.
Post-Lockdown Politics Will Disrupt Republicans Too Read More
Freedom can win in the long run. And the world will be rebuilt, on a much more solid foundation than was present two years ago. We tried an experiment in tyranny. It flopped. Despite the enormous cost of what took place, we will all find ourselves in a good position to see a rebirth of liberty, human rights, and prosperity on the other side.
