Protests are springing up everywhere, and they are doing so for good reason:
It’s fascinating and incredible to watch how Covid-19 coronavirus has created a partisan divide — and the primary issue is this: end the lockdowns or not. Let human beings act voluntarily, or use state coercion to force humans into the behavior you want.
The original and stated goal of the lockdowns — to slow the rate of Covid-19 infections so that hospitals aren’t overrun — has long been jettisoned in favor of the notion that it’s the omnipotent state alone capable of managing and micro-managing our lives and our work during this indefinite time of epidemic, and the state will do so by the only means it has at its disposal: force.
Initially, the state seized control not by majority vote (which would have been bad enough) but by executive decree. The stakes involved in this issue could not be higher: Forsake your freedoms to the omnipotent state who will make all significant decision for you about your work and your businesses — as well as many decisions that are not about your work: curfews, closures, driving, being outside, what you wear, and more.
Or: stand up for your rights and your freedom.
It has been said that most people don’t want freedom: they want comfort. This may well be true, but it remains to be seen if those who understand the paramount importance of freedom are the stronger voice — because, like all things when distilled down to the foundations, this issue is an issue of principle, which means it’s an issue of ideology and philosophy.
Educated people, as I’ve recently mentioned, even the most highly educated, are as susceptible as anyone to groupthink and cognitive bias, and not only can the most educated be stupidly naïve and ignorant: they are frequently so. It happens, in many cases, more often than not — especially concerning political-economic philosophy because postmodern leftist-progressive Neo-Marxist theory, in one form or another (and they’re all preposterously antiquated and have been proven wrong time and again), dominates academia around the globe, and has for many decades. Millions and millions of nominally educated people are thus inculcated up to the gills with this poisonous doctrine — this mathematically impossible economic theory of forced egalitarianism and altruism at the point of gun — and the overwhelming majority of these millions can’t even see that they’ve been inculcated with it, let alone think outside of its parameters.
What so many of these nominally educated people fail to grasp is the boundless possibilities which arise naturally from voluntary action, non-coercive adjustments, and human intelligence when left free of force — both by individuals acting with free agency and by businesses run by such individuals.
The more you treat human beings like helpless babies, the more human beings will expect to be treated this way — and therefore the greater the growing dependency on that monstrous leviathan known as the state, which is by definition an agency of force and as such cannot spend a single penny unless it first either taxes, borrows, or prints: until in a very short time, there is no end to the things that people, even once self-reliant people, come to expect the state (rather than voluntary transactions and peaceful exchanges among humans) to provide for everyone — all in exchange for your and my inalienable right to life and property, and that of course includes the limitless ingenuity and progress and health and wealth and civilization brought about by conditions of freedom and the protection of our inalienable rights.
There is a very specific reason that all societies governed predominantly by authoritarian states exist in widespread poverty and complete suppression of the individual’s rights, as there is a precise reason that all societies governed by a predominately laissez-faire state have, exactly to that extent, flourished and freed the individual.
Freedom once gone is gone forever.
This is why people must stand up against this unprecedented power-grab, and the propaganda campaign that largely fueled it.
Think of this:
Even if you’re perfectly okay with the state now having this kind of power over this particular thing, realize there is no longer any check on it: it was decreed by executive order, and that power is automatically unchecked, and horribly dangerous. Think of that unchecked power turning, for no reason or just cause, against something (or someone) you hold dear — because I promise you that it is only a matter of time before this unleashed power-source spreads into other areas. Power and bureaucracy once established are impossible to retrogress away from.
As epidemiologist Dr. Johann Giesecke says in this short video clip: People are perfectly capable of adjusting to emergencies and crises without the need of force and coercion.