The Battle for Our Freedom Has Only Just Begun

Many of us look on in sheer disbelief as we feel the ship of representative democracy beginning to sink. In spite of the withdrawal of Covid restrictions in places like England, Denmark, and Sweden, most countries have not admitted to the failure of their draconian restrictions, and continue to cling to the dangerous and hubristic hope that they can micromanage disease by playing god with people’s lives; more specifically, by applying heavy-handed NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) that have no substantial support in the scientific literature.

Governments have not repudiated ineffective and illiberal methods of disease control such as masking the healthy, shutting down businesses, border testing, and discriminatory digital surveillance. Indeed, even governments that have withdrawn Covid restrictions have done so on the basis of falling cases, rather than the spectacular failure and collateral harms of lockdown policies.

While we are right to celebrate the lifting of Covid restrictions, we should not let this euphoric moment go to our heads: like it or not, the logic of official government rhetoric surrounding the withdrawal of restrictions entails that heavy-handed NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions) remain on the table as eligible tools of disease control every time hospitals come under pressure from respiratory diseases.

If we saw a clear admission by public authorities that their departure from established international pandemic guidelines, such as those we find in official WHO guidance, was a serious mistake, we might have reason to be more optimistic that we have put this nonsense behind us. But in the absence of such an admission, every flu season is likely to give governments a vain pretext for invoking emergency powers and turning our lives upside down, in the name of public health.

Many of us feel sad, helpless, and frustrated as we see our nations consumed by a slavish and authoritarian ideology, and see our fellow citizens consumed by debilitating fear and distrust and turned against their fellow citizens by irresponsible government propaganda, clearly designed to unfairly scapegoat the unvaccinated for the Covid crisis.¹

While the withdrawal of most Covid restrictions in several countries brings welcome respite, this does not change the fact that we have laid down dangerous authoritarian precedents during this pandemic, precedents that have not been properly repudiated and therefore may be invoked every time we have a more or less severe flu season.

But all is not lost.

There is an incipient movement crystallising around the cause of freedom and constitutionalism. Many experienced and intelligent people have recognized the crisis we are in, and are pushing back.

Influential voices that have come to the defence of the cause of freedom include Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, epidemiologists such as Dr Martin Kulldorff of Harvard University, Dr Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University, and Dr Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, the Together campaign in the United Kingdom, and quite a few influential social media commentators, such as biologist Dr Bret Weinstein and podcast star Joe Rogan.

The Freedom Convey, organised to protest vaccine mandates, brought thousands of truckers to Ottawa, bringing the Canadian capital to a standstill. The ongoing protest has become an international beacon of light for the movement to combat the new Covid tyranny and restore the civil liberties of all.

It is critical that those of us fighting this new-fangled despotism understand that it is not ultimately about these Covid restrictions, but about the consolidation of a political class more interested in power and domination than public service, a class allied with massive economic interests - in particular those of Big Pharma and Big Tech.

This emerging class of political “leaders” are not really leaders at all, but lackeys in fancy suits who parrot empty slogans of “solidarity” and “responsibility” while throwing the most vulnerable in society - small businesses, manual labourers, schoolchildren, the poor, and the lonely - under the bus.²

Political rulers are duty-bound to serve as stewards of the common good. But with a few notable exceptions, they have done nothing of the sort. Most of the individuals holding positions of political power in the West today are unworthy of high office.

Naive and idealistic as it may sound, what we desperately need, now more than ever, are public servants who, instead of burdening citizens with ever more onerous taxes and regulations, take real risks to defend citizens’ interests and decentralise political power, so that local communities can develop the tools they need to better meet their needs.

The loosening of Covid restrictions is not the end of the battle for our freedoms. On the contrary, the battle has only just begun.

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• Here's Why Covid Measures Are Jeopardising the Future of Free and Open Societies

• Are Western Democracies on the Brink of a Regime Change?

• Mask Mandates Sum Up All that is Wrong with the New Covid Regime

• Freedom is Good for your Health

• How Dutch Windows Represent the Fine Line Between the Public and Private Spheres

• A Warrior Must Care for his Soul Too

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In case you missed the latest episode of Thunder Off Script, “Why I’ve Had Enough of Collectivism,” here it is:

1. To see how attacks on unvaccinated citizens are based on naive simplifications and frequently based on the disingenuous misrepresentation of hospital data, see my post, “Are We In a Pandemic of the Unvaccinated?” Also, see my interview with reporter Sonia Elijah, “How Governments Have Misrepresented and Distorted PCR and Hospitalisation Data.”

2. At the very start of the pandemic, one might put these collateral harms down to a panicky reaction by politicians in response to unsound public health advice. But as the accumulated harms became abundantly apparent, the excuse of ignorance lost all credibility. Those overseeing these disastrous policies had two years to correct their course, but just dug in instead. They never published a single comprehensive assessment of the costs and benefits of lockdown policies to justify their ongoing interventions. That shows beyond reasonable doubt that they were acting in bad faith.