No Liberty? No Problem

City Journal ^ | 30 Aug, 2021 | Arthur Chrenkoff

[MtnClimber]

Australians shrug at their government’s draconian pandemic response.

Riot police firing rubber bullets into lockdown protesters. Rescue dogs being shot to prevent volunteers travelling to collect them. Nighttime curfews and one hour of exercise per day. Five-kilometer travel limits. Soldiers patrolling suburbs to enforce lockdowns. Health bureaucrats advising the citizenry not to stop and talk to their neighbors while walking their dog.

What the hell is happening Down Under? “Totalitarianism,” says Tucker Carlson. “Australia has lost its collective mind,” according to Ben Shapiro. “If we invade Australia we will be greeted as liberators,” argues Jack Posobiec. Has Covid-19 really turned one of the world’s oldest democracies into a dystopian health dictatorship? As my Polish grandmother used to say, things are rarely as good or as bad as they appear.

First, some background to the current crisis. Australia has been the victim of both its success and its failure in tackling Covid. At just under 1,000 deaths, Australia has had the second-lowest mortality among the OECD countries (after New Zealand). It stands at just over 36 people per million of population, versus 1,853 for the United States. It helps, of course, to be an island nation that had closed its international borders at the start of the pandemic. The border remains closed today, with permits required to come to Australia (issued in limited numbers and limited circumstances) and to leave it. The few arrivals are subject to a 14-day quarantine. In addition, state governments have from the outset reacted with hard lockdowns and closures of their own borders. Flattening the curve was so successful that it prompted the transition to the elimination, or “zero Covid,” strategy. Hence, nowadays a mere handful of new cases is enough to send a state capital city with a multimillion population

[MtnClimber]

This is utopia to leftist politicians. This will continue until the citizens hake this hell for the politicians.

[Responsibility2nd]

It’s really no surprise that Australia has devolved into a totalitarian nation. The real surprise is that it took 25 years to do it.

It was in 1996 that the sheeple decided they were scared of their guns and voluntarily turned in over 1 million of them to the state. They weren’t ordered to; they weren’t forced to. They voluntarily made that choice.

And that was the beginning of the end.

[Schatze]

... "Covid is being paid for by a slowly unfolding mental-health crisis. Social isolation and dislocation are taking their toll in terms of rising suicide, depression, substance abuse, and domestic violence."

If/when they do lift the lockdown, I expect to see their murder rates skyrocket, too.

[dljordan]

“turned one of the world’s oldest democracies into a dystopian health dictatorship? “

That’s the plan for all of us. The same old families will still be at the top.

[cuz1961]

How tragically ironic

Nation born a penal colony
Nation died a penal colony.

[Bonemaker]

It was over when they caved on this...