It is not only about resistance but also rebuilding, not giving up on the dream of peace and prosperity, along with logic, science, and truth, even when so many have stopped believing. We welcome supporters of this vision. Indeed we need you and so does the future of civilization.
A society grounded on “social distancing” is a contradiction—it’s a kind of anti-society. Consider what happened to us, consider the human goods we sacrificed to preserve bare life at all costs: friendships, holidays with family, work, visiting the sick and dying, worshipping God, burying the dead.
According to public-health paternalists, almost no decisions that affect individuals’ health are truly ‘individual.’ Nearly all such decisions are either heavily determined by the actions of third parties, or themselves affect the choices of unsuspecting third parties.
Government power is not necessary. It is not likely to be effective, either. And when it is not effective, the tendency is to overreact in the opposite direction, clamping down and abusing, exactly as we’ve seen with the war on terror and China’s response to this virus, which might be as serious as bad seasonal flu outbreaks. Still, people assume that government is doing its job, government fails, and then government gets more power and does awful things with it. It’s the same story again and again.
I would have hoped that the arts community would be the first to welcome a return to seeing faces, exchanging smiles, and including all who want to benefit from the inspiration of art. Sadly this has not been the case.
Trust in government and its ability to solve problems has always tended to be higher in more urban areas. Government solutions tend to constrain individual action, and this too tends to be tolerated more in more populated areas. Across cultures and times, areas of higher population density have been associated with more politically and culturally progressive attitudes, manifested in a greater willingness to trust governmental power and to follow its lead.
Now that the population has gotten used to one form of mobilization and a sizable fraction has found it enjoys the opportunities that mobilization opens up for bullying, new mobilizations for new excuses will be harder to resist.
And now I see this country as split, but not down political lines anymore; that is just a facade. There is a distinct divide between those caught up in the revolving stories of war and disease through tech addiction and those who are – or have become – truth seekers, science followers, and truly critical thinkers.
Not too long ago, the cultivation of a wholesale disjunction between one’s inner thoughts and outer presentation was broadly seen as pathological. Now, however, the ability to propagate free-floating images of the self (and with it one’s chosen causes) is now presented as proof of good sense and high intelligence.
Students Against Mandates join with Jeffrey Tucker to discuss the lockdown and mandate trauma of the past two years. From prolonged isolation to discriminating mandates, government overreach to infringement on student and human rights, and what steps the organization is taking to fight back.
Images from Canada, of tables quaking under the weight of home-cooked food, of people in sub-zero temperatures lining the roadsides and bridges, of tweeted offers of hot showers and warm beds for strangers, of makeshift saunas and pop-up barbeques, of dancing and singing under threat of militarized suppression…these will not fade from our consciousness of what human beings who live freely with one another and in their environment can achieve and achieve with joy.
Conviviality: The Alternative to the Administrative State Read More
Biden, Putin, and the CCP all face the same problem: they preside over systems that are underperforming and generating enormous unrest at all levels. The leaders blame each other while the people in all countries are left to suffer. We are just at the beginning, but this strategy of deflection could end very badly for the arrogant political class that imagines no limit to their power.
