Once upon a time, I thought most of us agreed that heavily armed police asking people for their papers, concentration camps for the sick, armies patrolling the streets and breaking up peaceful protests, citizens not talking to their neighbors, executing dogs, and manhunts for people who sneeze have no place in a free society. Boy, was I terribly mistaken.
I’ve never considered myself naïve, but up until recently I blithely believed that the free world was in near unanimous agreement on a few fundamental principles. While we might disagree on every policy imaginable, we all agreed that the bedrock of our society was core liberal values like freedom of speech and expression, the limited powers of police and the government to interfere with the day to day actions of citizens, equality and clarity under the law, and the right to protest to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The coronavirus pandemic, however, has laid bare and bloody the harsh reality that this is not remotely the case. There is a sizable segment of the population, especially in educated, establishment circles, that seems to believe the rights we enjoy in a free society can be indefinitely and arbitrarily suspended, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
As such, New Zealand, Australia, and parts of Europe have become literally blinking red warning signs for anyone concerned about the future of the free world. We are witnessing policies and practices most would’ve considered unimaginable just 18 short months ago, and, even worse, they’re being instituted with the full support of the government and establishment classes. The sight of people being forced to show their papers to heavily armed police simply for sitting in an outdoor café, requiring permission from the government to leave their homes or simply talk to their neighbors, manhunts for people who sneeze without covering their faces, quarantine camps, and even the summary execution of shelter dogs for fear someone might come to adopt them, should be far more than a wake up call, but few are paying attention or seem to care.
Fortunately, citizens of the United States still enjoy the Constitutional protections of the Bill of Rights and, though I believe some of the more aggressive measures implemented by cities and states infringe on those freedoms, it’s nothing like the scale and audacity we’ve seen elsewhere in supposedly free countries. New Zealand and Australia, in particular, are under police and even army enforced lockdowns where you cannot leave your house, even alone, without an “essential” reason and, if you dare to disagree, you will be arrested, if not beaten by the police. The latest plan in Australia is to continue the strict lockdown policy until 70% of Australians are vaccinated, this despite the recent record high of infections being a paltry 914 with an average of 1.5 deaths per day in a country of almost 26,000,000 million people. The vaccination rate is now only about 30%, meaning they have months more to go with nearly 60% of the population under strict lockdown orders, enforced aggressively by the police.
In New South Wales, for example, they’re handing out close to 1,000 fines per day for breaches of these draconian public health orders. The lockdown in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales, was supposed to last for two weeks, but is now entering it’s ninth week with no end in sight. In the interim, citizens are supposed to be pleased that the government is allowing an “exercise hour,” and if you’re fully vaccinated, an entire additional “recreation hour.” The army has been deployed on the streets of the city and fines for defying the lockdown orders can reach as high as $3,700. Nor are fines the only insane measures in place. In one instance, a local government in a rural area decided to kill shelter dogs rather than risk spreading coronavirus during the adoption process. The Office of Local Government said it “has been informed that the council decided to take this course of action to protect its employees and community, including vulnerable Aboriginal populations, from the risk of COVID-19 transmission.”
The Australian media has been near unanimous in supporting these policies, actively participating in “manhunts” for fugitives that have committed the crime of sneezing in public without covering their faces, even though they were alone at the time. Another manhunt is on for even more dastardly individuals, “A tip to Crime Stoppers has blown the lid on a church service at #Blacktown, attended by 60 adults and children. The gathering has been described as selfish and arrogant.” This was actually tweeted out by the media in Australia. Apparently, going to a church service is now something you can “blow the lid on” like crime syndicate or child pornography ring.
Incredibly, some are saying the lockdowns in Sydney don’t go far enough, and they should take their cues from Melbourne in the state of Victoria. Michael Toole, a professor at the Burnet Institute, is part of a group of “health experts,” as described by NBC News, that seeks “harsher lockdown measures” including “closing far more business.” Apparently, Sydney has it right where there is a city wide curfew, closed playgrounds, and mostly shuttered businesses. Meanwhile, the Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, is busy scolding citizens for the scourge of watching a sunset. “There’s a bunch of people down at the Rye Beach last night who thought the best thing to do was to watch the sunset. I’m sure it was a beautiful sunset. But that’s not in the spirit or in the letter of these rules.”
Not to be outdone, in Brisbane, the capital of the state of Queensland, they’re actively promoting the construction of coronavirus concentration camps as if these were positive developments. Annastacia Palaszczuk, the Premier of Queensland, bragged that a “dedicated regional quarantine facility will be built at Wellcamp Airport near Toowoomba. As we contend with the dangerous Delta variant, we need fit-for-purpose quarantine facilities.” A second tweet said, “That’s why we’re taking decisive action to build this new 1000-bed facility under a joint agreement between the Palaszczuk government and the @Wagner_Corp. Wagner Corporation expects the first stage of the facility to be delivered for use by the end of 2021.” Note that they’re building facilities for use long after the current quarantines are expecting to end. Why would we need them after everyone was vaccinated?
Alas, the people of Australia don’t even have the right to protest these disturbing policies any longer, after legal protections were stripped in 2016. Nor do they have much of a right to bear arms, when an earlier round of “reforms” banned semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, requiring a “reason” to own a gun with self-defense purposes not being allowed. They can do pretty much nothing about it except obey. The citizens are entirely at the mercy of the government, and the government is no longer the least bit afraid to use excessive force to enforce it’s draconian will. There are some who still try to protest and make their voices heard, but they are quickly shut down by the police and the military. If anyone in the world still doesn’t understand why an armed citizenry is necessary as a bulwark against an oppressive government, they need only look to the recent protests in Australia.
Last weekend, thousands of protestors faced off against these policies in defiance of restrictions in Melbourne, Sydney, and other cities. The police used pepper spray, fire hoses, and physical force to break them up and keep them in line, refusing to recognize any right to peaceably assemble. In disturbing videos, protestors are seen being beaten and arrested without even so much as being told of the crime. As Reuters reported, “Mounted police used pepper spray in Melbourne to break up crowds of more than 4,000 surging toward police lines, while smaller groups of protesters were prevented from congregating in Sydney by a large contingent of riot police.” Further, “Police patrolled Sydney’s streets and blocked private and public transport into the city centre to reduce the number of people gathering at an unauthorised protest.” The BBC described it as a “smaller protest here in Sydney,” “overcome by the police in its early parts,” meaning a media organization that trumpets free speech rights for them, are completely fine not extending them to the likes of you and me. Perhaps needless to say, they helpfully added, “Of course, the vast majority of Australians who are under these stay at home orders are doing that, really staying at home,” congratulating the happy little sheep afraid to speak to their neighbors.
I am not now nor have I ever been an advocate for violence by any means, but does anyone truly believe the police and army would be so cavalier to “overcome” an armed protest?
Meanwhile in New Zealand, the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern literally ordered citizens to stay in their “bubble” after a single case of COVID-19 was reported in the entire country. “Stay local and do not congregate. Don’t talk to your neighbors. Please keep to your bubbles. It comes down again to those very simple principles. We know from overseas, cases of the Delta variant, that it can be spread by people simply walking past one another. So keep those movements outside to the bare minimum. Wear a mask and make sure to keep up that physical distancing.” Incredibly, the establishment media is in full support. The Guardian claimed the citizens told to hide in their homes were actually “happy hobbits” under her rule. Forbes described her as “possibly the globe’s most successful Covid general.” Vox said she was “hailed for her Covid-19 response.” NBC called it a “world-leading response.”
None of these outlets bother to ask a simple, obvious question: How is a citizen any different than a serf or even a slave if the government can impose any restrictions it wants and then decide on its own if you have the right to protest or even free speech in response? This is a wildly different conception of government as it is normally understood in the free world, where the government is constituted by the will of the people and is inherently restrained from taking certain actions, or should the government overreach as has happened in the past, the people are free to gather, protest, and speak their minds to voice their concerns. The underlying assumption here, however, is that citizens of the free world no longer have basic rights and are subject completely to the whims of the government.
Nor does it really matter to the politicians or the establishment media whether or not the government’s policies actually work or if the government is honest with the citizenry. In Australia, the lockdowns can continue as long as they want and you might get shipped off to a concentration camp later in the year. Back in the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci and others have been spreading blatant falsehoods about the effectiveness of the masks and the vaccines for months now with no consequences and barely any criticism. For example, he was asked just this week if surgical masks are good enough or if we should wear N95 masks, and he responded, “You know maybe instead of worrying about what kind of mask, just wear a mask, wear a surgical mask, wear a cloth masks…we need to wear masks.” This is after he himself said in a private email that masks “bought at a drugstore” were ineffective and a recent study concluded that the common surgical masks only offers 10% protection, less than what can be obtained through decent ventilation alone in an indoor space. According to the University of Waterloo, “The results show that a standard surgical and three-ply cloth masks…filter at apparent efficiencies of only 12.4% and 9.8%, respectively,” meaning they do next to nothing.
The good doctor and the US government has also repeatedly spread false statistics about the efficacy of vaccines, particularly against the Delta variant, all the while planning for an endless round of soon to be mandated booster shots, to be taken only 6 months after the original inoculation, something that isn’t even done for the annual flu shot. Unfortunately, the latest studies indicate that the vaccine is only 66% effective against catching the Delta, and that number may be falling fast according to a recent report. As described by WION News, “The report’s authors said there were a number of caveats, including that the protection from vaccines could be waning over time anyway, and the 66 per cent estimate was based on a relatively short study period with few infections.” As physician Buzz Hollander writes for Real Clear Science, “The real world effectiveness of the Moderna and Pfizer (mRNA) vaccines appears to be sinking like a stone.” The solution, of course, is these booster shots, even as we have no clinical evidence the booster itself is effective against Delta either. Dr. Fauci’s latest plan is that we should all be wearing masks and social distancing through the spring of 2022; interestingly, the same plan as earlier in they year when he said next Mother’s Day. This after none other than President Joe Biden declared victory against the virus on July 4.
This should not be construed as being anti-vaccine. I am vaccinated and I have encouraged others to do the same, but the truth should still count and the free world should still be free. No one that advocates for and supports these policies has satisfactorily explained the disconnect between the statements of our public health experts and the reality of the facts on the ground, or why the elites in our establishment themselves don’t seem to be the least bit inclined to follow the policies they themselves are promoting, making them more free than their subjects. Nancy Pelosi demands masks in Congress and talks up masks in public, but in private she gathers in crowds for fundraisers in coronavirus hotspots completely mask free — while the mostly minority wait staff is masked up. Once again, citizens are seen as serfs, not even free to breathe on the ruling class.
As I said at the start of this post, I’ve never considered myself naive, but this is brand new territory. Heavily armed police are patrolling city streets asking people for their papers, people are being locked up and fined simply for speaking their minds, if not sent to concentrations camps for the crime of being sick, leaders are forbidding citizens from watching the sunset or speaking to their own neighbors, speech is being aggressively policed by social media companies and the government, and we’re killing dogs for fear they will get adopted. Does anyone reasonably believe this ends well? Once upon a time, I thought most of us agreed none of this was acceptable in a free society. I guess one lives and learns, unfortunately…
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 
I agree that this won’t end well. Maybe someday enough people will catch on to this information: https://rclutz.com/2021/08/25/corona-perspectives-from-swiss-policy-research/. But then what will happen?
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