“Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin
We’re a nation of ANZACs, our leaders like to remind us, every April 25th.
They like to remind us just once a year. They don’t like to remind us too much.
I come from a military background, as does my partner. Every year we can be found at the Dawn Service with family and friends, remembering our countrymen who gave their everything so that we and our children could live in peace and freedom.
There are many events on our calendar that might slip from time to time, but never this. Never this.
Except for this year. ANZAC services are cancelled this year.
I’m appalled.
Have we changed so much as a nation that our forefathers were willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom, facing bullets and bombs, but we cower here in our homes sacrificing all our freedom for just a tiny bit of safety from a virus?
Are we that pathetic?
The Government has been quick to shut so much down, with no consultation, debate or pushback. We citizens never got a chance. One minute it was business-as-usual, next it was Gestapo, Kiwi-style.
(It’s interesting to point out that ALL Government workers are still considered “essential” – right down to the lowliest admin person. Butchers aren’t necessary – unless they’re Halal, of course – but the people who know how to photocopy stuff and take minutes are vital. And are being fully paid.)
All the local and community newspapers have been shut down, as has local talkback radio.
[Editor’s note: the Government has reconsidered its definition of “essential media” so that it will now include those publications which meet the following criteria:
- serves a need for hard to reach rural communities, with reduced connectivity,
- and/or serves non-English speaking communities,
- and have appropriate health and safety measures to minimise the spread of COVID-19 during production and delivery.]
Local newspapers such as the Otago Daily Times are now carefully screening their comments sections – and not much that is critical of the Government is getting through.
It’s a Jacinda lovefest out there. Anyone would think every single New Zealander is on board with everything she’s done.
Censorship abounds, especially regarding criticism of China. There has not been a single mention in the mainstream media of how China first created this mess and is now poised to profit hugely from it, selling us everything we need from PPE to new computers for our stay-at-home workforce and schoolchildren. There’s been no mention of how the virus figures out of China don’t add up and are out of alignment with those from the rest of the world – glaringly obvious to anyone outside of government.
There’s no questioning how we might avoid this all happening again, and no discussion of how it happened in the first place, how we made ourselves so vulnerable to a huge foreign power, and how unwise some of our choices as a nation may have been.
There’s very little mention of the lack of accountability the NZ Police now have, and the fact that overnight we seem to have become a police state, with the Police now controlling everything and Mike Bush our de facto Prime Minister.
Look, I get it. This virus kills. It could kill our parents, our grandparents, our most vulnerable. It might even kill you and me. Nobody wants our loved ones to die. Nobody wants to take unnecessary risks.
But if we’re so afraid of this that we’re willing to give up practically every single freedom we have – everything we claim to believe in, everything the ANZACs fought for – then we may as well don our Mao suits and start handing out copies of the Communist Manifesto.
It’s all over. Time to kneel. Obey now! We didn’t even put up a fight.
Our economy wasn’t wiped out by some natural disaster. It was wiped out because Jacinda said so, then proceeded to destroy New Zealand, in one day, with the stroke of a pen. She then let the Police take over and bully the population into submission.
No vote, no referendum. Just thuggery and threats.
HOW WILL IT END?
We’ve been asked, like sheep, to stay in our pens, and like sheep we’ve willingly complied.
The rules keep changing, yet we’ve never even asked what right our Government has to make these rules in the first place! We’ve just cowered and assented. We’ve even been asked to snitch on our neighbours and friends. Should we pick on the Jewish ones first?
Some of us have even thanked our jailers, and praised Jesus and Jacinda for locking us in our cells.
We haven’t been brave ANZACs. Instead, we’ve cowered and hidden beneath the covers and hoped it all goes away.
I feel ashamed. I feel sick to my stomach, actually.
There are bigger things in this world than living and dying. These are the ideas and beliefs that we live and die for – liberty, love, friendship, family, country, tradition, religion, bravery, honesty.
If we don’t put our freedom ahead of our safety, as the ANZACs did, then we truly deserve neither. We’ll be nothing but a nation of sheep.
It’s time we stopped being sheep.
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