Tag: authoritarianism

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general freedom too much government

Worse Than Shanghaied

Shanghai, China, covid, masks, oppression

Two years into the pandemic, we in America are now mostly arguing about masks.

We’ve suffered pretty repressive measures, here. But we haven’t had to cope with:

● Being literally imprisoned in your home. Stopped from going out even to get food.

● Having fences erected around your home. “What if a fire breaks out?” one Shanghai resident asked a reporter. “I don’t think anyone in their right mind can seal person’s homes.” (Well, fire is not a virus.)

● Being ejected from your home and forced into public barracks for people infected with COVID-19.

● Being ejected from your home so that it can be disinfected.

● Being subjected to a “zero COVID-19” policy, zero common sense.

This is the fate of millions in Shanghai and elsewhere in China.

In the U.S., maybe you were harassed for conducting unmasked church services or keeping your shop open. Maybe you got arrested for paddle boarding, alone, in the Pacific Ocean.

It got pretty bad. But what we are seeing in Shanghai is the reality of a totalitarian regime when it chooses to fully exercise its power to repress. At any moment, the Chinazi state may make it impossible for millions to take the simplest steps to survive.

Shanghai residents may not even complain about their fate. To the extent they have voiced any complaints publicly, the Chinese government has struggled to eliminate all traces of the complaints.

Here, at least, we can gripe. 

But what does a people do when not allowed to protest or argue against their oppressors?

They scream. At night, the people of Shanghai yell out their windows.

Think of it as the soundtrack of mass misery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights too much government

Four of Five Doctors Disagree

Salem Witch Trial

“Thank goodness I don’t live in X,” we may say as we follow the news.

Billions live in Russia, Ukraine, China, Xinjiang, Tibet, Hong Kong, Cuba, New York, Chicago, Seattle, California, Canada, and other statist hellholes. The rest of us live elsewhere. Perhaps we congratulate ourselves on our wise choices of birth location and/or subsequent residencies.

But people are copycats.

As producers, we are often inspired by great achievements and seek to emulate them. The destroyers among us, somewhat similarly, are eager to adopt the latest in fashionable assault on what the producers are doing.

So we don’t necessarily escape if, say, California prohibits physicians from discussing things medical whenever their judgment conflicts with state-approved doctrine. Because next thing you know, lawmakers in Tennessee or Virginia will be saying, “Gee, that’s right, gag the doctors. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Legislative masterminds in California now want to harass doctors who recommend a non-government-approved treatment for COVID-19. If AB 2098 is passed, it would authorize California medical boards to discipline doctors for “dissemination of misinformation” related to COVID-19.

The bill implies that no doctor can legitimately disagree with another about a particular case. (Yeah? See the history of medicine.)

When I say that this legislation assaults truth and truth-seeking — which requires freedom of speech as a necessary corollary of freedom of thought in medicine or in any field — I speak for Californian doctors and California patients.

I speak also for us all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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The Witch Trial of George Jacobs by Thompkins. H. Matteson

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general freedom ideological culture Regulating Protest

Sources of Trudeau 2022

Justin Trudeau, authoritarian

The willingness of Canada’s thug-in-chief to so obnoxiously penalize protest — for one, “de-banking” trucker-protesters and supporters alike without even fake court orders — has shocked many of civilized sensibility.

Shouldn’t be surprising, though. It’s nothing new either in Justin Trudeau’s conduct or in that of Western governments. (The Canadian parliament has now endorsed the crackdown.)

David Solway reports that Trudeau’s reign has long been blighted by tyrannical policies as well as by overt sympathy for terrorists, dictators, and dictatorship.

And Glenn Greenwald observes that it has become standard in the West for many “who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists [to] wield the defining weapons of despotism” — weapons like squelching dissent (directly or indirectly by enlisting private firms to function as agents of repression) and punishing dissenters without trial.

Greenwald relates the example of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. When the U.S. government found no way to criminally charge him, it pressured firms to terminate his financial accounts and kick WikiLeaks off private servers.

Such tactics as pressuring, or ordering, companies to censor and financially ostracize political opponents “without a whiff of due process” are now part of the standard governmental toolkit.

The scale on which Trudeau has been doing this, and the flagrancy of it, may seem new in North America. But he is relying on well-established precedent. Pre-pandemic precedent.

But the framework for opposing this new authoritarianism has more precedent. Alberta’s premier, Jason Kenney, has rightly sued Trudeau and the Canadian government for abuse of authority in resorting to emergency powers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs media and media people

Exclusion-Enforced Inclusion

covid, Canada, Justin Trudeau, authoritarianism, freedom

When the prime minister of Canada told the world that “Building Back Better means” not only helping the “most vulnerable” but also “maintaining our momentum on reaching the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” it might behoove us to look it up.

It’s not a secret.

It’s part of what Davos globalist Klaus Schwab calls “The Great Reset.” And the links between Schwab and Justin Trudeau are not tenuous: “what we’re really proud of now is the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau,” gushed Schwab weeks ago.

Well, Trudeau really had a chance to prove his Klausian globalist mettle last week.

Trudeau had indeed leveraged the coronavirus pandemic to institute tight statist controls on the Canadian population, right out of Schwab’s playbook.* But his vax mandate for truckers led not merely to supply-chain problems in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the massive convoy protests in Ottawa.

So how did Schwab’s proud privileged prodigy perform?

First, he went into hiding. And then, while the protesters were explicitly directed against the vaccine mandates — notwithstanding the fact that 90 percent “of Canada’s cross-border truckers . . . has had two shots” — Justin Trudeau couldn’t help himself, condemning “the antisemitism, Islamophobia,** anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia that we’ve seen on display in Ottawa over the past number of days,” he proclaimed in a tweet. “Together, let’s keep working to make Canada more inclusive.”

Well, mandating vaccines is forced inclusion, the ominous part of the Schwab/Trudeau agenda, enforced by exclusion. 

No wonder the growing opposition, sporting anti-Klausian signs such as “Mandate Freedom.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The ’book in question being Schwab’s explicit program in Covid-19: The Great Reset.

** Some participants are undoubtedly many of those phobic things, but evidence at the rally? Scant. As Tucker Carlson pointed out in his coverage, the protesters even shoveled snow and picked up trash after themselves.

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture

Specifically Alarming

Heartland Institute/Rasmussen Reports, covid, Democrat

To see Washington politicians and political hacks behaving badly, demanding the power to roll over the rights of those with whom they disagree, is not nearly as frightening — because it’s now so mundane — as to witness that insiders’ itch also infecting the grassroots of the body politic like a viral contagion.

Specifically alarming? A new Heartland Institute/Rasmussen Reports survey of voters finds a plurality of self-identified Democrats (48 percent) support slapping fines and imposing prison sentences on Americans “who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines.”

No joke, as President Biden would say . . . but I’m telling the truth. 

Here’s the precise question asked: “Would you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose a proposal for federal or state governments to fine or imprison individuals who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications?”

Thankfully, the overall numbers less portend a totalitarian future, where speech would be thoroughly policed and suppressed (like China today). Pro-censorship Americans total only 27 percent of the population, with fully two-thirds of us opposed to shredding the First Amendment.

Still, per this poll, it isn’t free speech alone that Blue Team members are increasingly willing to jettison in fear of COVID:

  • “Forty-five percent (45%) of Democrats would favor governments requiring citizens to temporarily live in designated facilities or locations if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine,” explained Rasmussen Reports. 
  • And 47 percent of Democrats support “governments using digital devices to track unvaccinated people.”
  • Nearly a third of “Democratic voters would support temporarily removing parents’ custody of their children if parents refuse to take the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Constitutional rights belong to everyone . . . “in sickness and in health.” 

Right? Democrats?  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense crime and punishment general freedom

Against the Regime

NYC, vaccine, little boy, police

Recently, a tyke and his mommy were booted from a Big Apple Applebee’s because the little boy lacked a vaccine passport.

That is, the mother possessed no proof that her son had been vaccinated against the disease of the day.

Now, parents have every right to refrain from getting their kids injected — especially given the low risk that kids will become seriously ill from COVID-19 and the non-negligible risk of harm from vaccine side effects.

But such considerations didn’t prevent a gang of police — no students of Mayberry’s Sheriff Andy Taylor — from ordering the expulsion. (There’s video.)

Residents of New York City’s vaccination regime can at least move to another town. People elsewhere, in larger jurisdictions — Austria, Australia, England — face greater difficulties escaping pandemic tyranny. But, like us, they can protest and they can sue.

In England, a group called Big Brother Watch is challenging the COVID Pass Scheme imposed by the government of Boris Johnson. Their lengthy “pre-action letter” argues that no evidence exists that the passes will reduce the spread of the virus and that the scheme is “unnecessary and disproportionate.”

Amidst so much “information” under dispute, we know three things.

One, for all the suffering and death it has inflicted on the most vulnerable, the current pandemic is hardly the Black Death. It isn’t even the Spanish flu.

Two, being “vaccinated” against COVID-19 does not prevent one from becoming infected or from infecting others.

Three, shutting down society also inflicts suffering. Great suffering. As must shutting down whichever segments of society decline Draconian mandates.

Maybe the scourge of tyranny isn’t the best balm for the scourge of COVID-19.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom nannyism national politics & policies

Faucists on the March

Fauci, fascist, authoritarian, Covid

While many experts, including Southwest Airline’s CEO, think that the air filtration systems on jetliners are so good that wearing protective face coverings (“masks”) is pointless, our Doctor Anthony Fauci will have none of it.

When the National Institutes of Health head honcho and Big Pharma Pusher No. 1 was asked about whether we can ditch masks on airplanes, he responded predictably: no. “I think when you’re dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step. . . .” He says that even with first-rate filtration systems, “masks are a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it.”

This was on ABC News’s This Week on Sunday. 

“As Christmas approaches, COVID-19 again threatens to upend American life, driving the spread, Omicron,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl narrated. “At least 43 states now have confirmed cases of the latest and by far most contagious variant yet. On Saturday alone, New York state reported nearly 22,000 new COVID cases, breaking a single-day record set just the day before.” And then Karl mentioned total COVID deaths in the United States — but not the number of Omicron deaths. 

See how the propaganda is pitched? The breathless relaying of statistics, but nothing like a sense of the science.

Contra Fauci, these once-discouraged and now-forever-exalted masks are not nearly as effective as made out. And they have severe “unintended” effects.

I put marks around “unintended” because for some people in power, the psychological effects of mandatory masks in a situation of perpetual or seasonal alarm might be the whole point: the inducement of a mass delusional psychosis. How very fascist.

We can appreciate the name “Fauci” both by rhyme and reason: Faucism is medical fascism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture partisanship

Authoritarian Ardor

Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald calls it a “mountain of data.” 

On his Rumble account, “System Update,” the journalist shows “how authoritarian self-identified followers of the Democratic Party have become.”

While admitting that “authoritarian tendencies” are in every group, Greenwald insists that “when you examine this data . . . and really compile it, and look all at once at it, it is extraordinary — no matter how low your expectations are of Democrats — how authoritarian they have become, particularly in the wake of the Trump years.”

Citing Pew Research from August, the well-known reporter begins by showing how opinions on free speech have diverged over the last three years: while Republicans wanting the federal government to “take steps to restrict false info online” declined from 37 percent to 28 percent, Democratic support rose from 40 percent to 65 percent. 

And the itch to have tech companies do the dirty work for the federal government “even if it limits freedom of info” shows the same spread: R’s went down 9 points and D’s went up a whopping sixteen!

Greenwald also explores Democrats’ enduring affection for corporate media news, how enthusiastic Democratic politicians are for curbing the basic rights of their political opponents, and how much ardor Democrats show the CIA and the FBI.

All the data, Greenwald insists, shows Democrats getting “more authoritarian by the minute.”

Why?

It might best be looked at in an insider/outsider context. Democrats are becoming more authoritarian because it is their hold on power that they are defending, and Republicans are reacting against that stranglehold. An old principle may be at work: outside of power, people tend to demand freedom; inside, they demand more power.

Authoritarianism is more appealing to insiders, viewing themselves as “authorities.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Greenwald

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media and media people

Prognosis: Negative

wolf, authoritarianism, totalitarianism

Ah, the Law of Unintended Consequences!

It doesn’t apply just to government programs. It also applies to journalistic crusades.

What am I talking about?

Well, by now, it is pretty clear that the mask mandates, social distancing efforts, and lockdown policies have not worked very well, if at all. But that hasn’t stopped corporate newsmedia.

From what? 

From inducing panic by playing up the negative aspects of the COVID epidemic, and downplaying — even suppressing — information that would mitigate . . . their propagation of panic.

And policies of an extreme nature.

Jacob Sullum, writing at Reason, calls our attention to recent research: “Based on an analysis of news stories about COVID-19 that appeared from January 1 through July 31, Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote and two other researchers found that 91 percent of the coverage by major U.S. media outlets was ‘negative in tone.’ The rate was substantially lower in leading scientific journals (65 percent) and foreign news sources (54 percent).” 

It has consequences: “This unrelenting, indiscriminate negativity fosters suspicion and resistance. Journalists and politicians who repeatedly cry wolf should not be surprised at the lack of cooperation when the beast actually appears.”

Which suggests that corporate media’s approach to the disease and our responses to it has had effects quite the opposite of what leftist Yellow Journalists aim: total government control of the populace in the cause of fighting a disease.

By overstating their case, and even flagrantly fibbing, they may be inoculating us from the very disease they promote.

That disease being not COVID, of course, but Therapeutic Totalitarianism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs

Disgraced, Enraged, Belligerent

China, virus, Covid, coronavirus, authoritarianism,

“Over the course of April and throughout May,” writes Timothy McLaughlin in The Atlantic, “Beijing was undertaking aggressive actions across Asia.” These include:

  • The ramming — and sinking — of a Vietnamese vessel in the South China Sea.
  • Intrusive surveying by a Chinese research vessel (plus coast-guard and other ships) near a Malaysian oil rig, drawing warships from the United States and Australia. 
  • Creating two administrative units on islands in the South China Sea claimed by Vietnam. 
  • Ugly if predictable rage directed towards Taiwan, “whose handling of the pandemic has won plaudits and begun a push for more international recognition.”*

Bursting out of Wuhan, did the coronavirus pandemic, responsible so far for taking more than 350,000 lives worldwide, not make the Chinese rulers look bad enough?**

Now the Butchers of Beijing move against Hong Kong, today considering a so-called “national security law” to further take away Hongkongers’ civil liberties. The CCP gang is so insecure they cannot stand to hear Hong Kong crowds boo the Chinese national anthem at soccer matches. So the new law will punish the Bronx cheer with three years in prison.

Months ago, former New York Mayor and short-lived Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg argued that America would “have to deal with China” . . . “to solve the climate crisis. . . . because our economies are inextricably linked.”

Yesterday, showing more backbone, the U.S. Congress passed legislation asking the Trump Administration to sanction Chinese officials over the camps imprisoning Uighurs. Meanwhile, responding to China’s Hong Kong clampdown, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared the territory “not autonomous” from China, which could lead to a big change in trade status.

It is getting harder to ignore this menace in Asia.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* For some reason, Mr. McLaughlin left the recent border clashes between China and India, which have left 100 soldiers injured, off his list. 

** They looked especially bad after it came out that the Chinese government had arrested doctors in Wuhan to cover it up.

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