Given the unforeseen success of the Canadian truckers and their supporters in drawing the world’s attention to the two-year attack on their freedoms, with the subsequent revocation of vaccine passport mandates in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and now Ontario – the Israeli Freedom Convoy stands a good
How do individuals know what’s best for them? While the scientific knowledge, theoretical or technical expertise of one person, or one profession, may help shed light on what’s best for individuals, it can never be enough. Only individuals themselves have the unique knowledge that all others do not have, about their individual-specific ever-changing circumstances, constraints, needs and preferences.
Which Pandemic Response Achieves the Greater Good? Read More
It shouldn’t be needed, but it is. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has introduced a patient protection bill, so that ‘if you’re in a hospital or long-term care facility, you have a right to have your loved ones there present with you.’ Every other state and country will hopefully follow. Some places have even prevented the dying from dying in the company and warmth of loved ones.
Lacking the big-picture thinking and inner convictions to make tough calls, our ostensible leaders let themselves be pushed around by scientists whose ideas they did not understand. Nor did they have the guts to balance them with other measures of societal health. Mix in the fear of angering the Twitter mob and you get a recipe for timid, uninspired orations.
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.
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.
So you’ll forgive the people who don’t want to play a bit part in the weird, hyperventilating Covid reality show the media’s producing 24-7. You’ll understand when the art appearing on their streets takes an edge, bucktooths a lower lip, and throws you the bird.
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.
The public demanded control over something that couldn’t be controlled. Local, state, and national leaders, whether they understood that they couldn’t actually offer increased safety or not, began to offer the next best thing—The Appearance of Safety.
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.
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.
Central to the lure of fascism is the lie that power will not corrupt us. As illustrated poignantly in The Hobbit, the lure of fascism – even to the morally upright person – is the delusion that he can both hold absolute power and continue to be a morally good person. By succumbing to the lure of power, an otherwise good person succumbs to the lie that power corrupts everyone else, but not himself, because he is Better.
