Posted on 12/31/2020 7:12:28 PM PST by CheshireTheCat
2020 will be remembered for many things: COVID-19, nationwide riots, a divisive election. But the rise of pandemic lockdowns will go down as the most momentous. Never before have the day-to-day lives of so much of humanity been so radically upended. And, outside of wartime, never before has there been such a widespread and extreme rollback of human freedom.
How did it all happen so fast? Why did people give in so quickly to such a sweeping assault on liberty, even in America, “the land of the free”?
In a word, they let their guard down. They stopped being vigilant.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Thomas Jefferson never wrote those words exactly, but they are true nonetheless. Free people, to stay free, must forever be on their guard against would-be tyrants.
The Tyrant’s Plea But tyrants long ago learned a method of making free people drop their guard. The trick is to use an emergency as an excuse for power grabs, telling the people that the sacrifice of their liberty is necessary for their safety.
“‘Emergencies,’” wrote F.A. Hayek in 1973, “have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded...”
Hayek was not the first to notice this.
“Necessity,” William Pitt the Younger warned in 1783, “is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”
And in Paradise Lost (1667), John Milton wrote:
And with necessity, The tyrant's plea, excus'd his devilish deeds
The greater the emergency, the more persuasive is this “tyrant’s plea.” Thus, the COVID mega-emergency was an especially convincing excuse for suspending liberty: an exceptional situation that called for exceptional measures....
(Excerpt) Read more at fee.org ...
#ignoredemocratrules
JoMa
Why? Simple answer? “We the people” have made ourselves dependent on Government for far too long in getting our problems solved. Kinda like medicine. Give us a pill to fix us and then give us a “Bill” to keep us fixed.
Took 100 years of deliberately worsening public education and fear and emotion-based decision making to get the conditions to pull this off.
We trusted them when they said it would only be for a short time.
I. The beginning it made sense but, after March, it should have have ended.
I posted about this, the other day.
Yep, this was a test of the emergency broadcast system, this was only a test.
“The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.” - Albert Camus
Then in March they said there would be a second wave of the epidemic like there was with the Spanish Flu in 1918.
Low and behold there was another flu season in the Fall! Who would have guessed?
And to keep the panic rolling they are now seeing a new strain that is EVEN MORE contagious coming from Britain.
Balls.
Simple as that.
The end.
Governments used their best weapon: instilling fear in the population. Make inherently cowardly people even more fearful than usual and they will do anything they are told, without question.
Teachers.
Many decades of teachers indoctrinating American children (many in their 50’s now).
Followed by further indoctrination from college prof’s, Hollywood and MSM.
Brainwashed into believing that God is out, government is the answer to everything, women = men, socialism is great, gay is okay, 2 + 2 can equal 5, you get a blue ribbon for showing up, whites are racists, there are dozens of genders and riots are protests.
Why did people give in so quickly to such a sweeping assault on liberty
At the start, fear of death.
Now, we know the facts.
The survival rate is 99.999%.
Those who succumb to flu/COVID/pneumonia are in the bonus round of their life. Their bodies are beyond worn out and they are alive because of the miracles of modern medicine.
The bureaucrats, who think they are the only ones who care, want to save everyone. That gives them power and control over the non essentials.
I resolve not to wear a mask!
Those elastic strings, that hold the mask on your face, will end up in the ocean. They will roll up into a huge lump and be found floating beside the huge lump of plastic straws.
I do not want to contribute to that pending global disaster!
Science is good. Scientists, not so much.
Anything ever undertaken in the name of the ‘’common good’’ is neither common nor good.
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