As I noted, some months ago, the very fact that politicians can brag about “freedom incentives” proves that we are not free. When politicians openly talk of “granting limited freedoms”, it is as clear an admission as any that we are not free. In fact, politicians are tacitly admitting that they have stripped away our “normal freedoms”, using the China virus pandemic as a threadbare excuse.
Freedoms which were never theirs to take. In a liberal democracy — such as we kid ourselves we still inhabit — freedom is not something that the government deigns to grant its citizens, it’s an inalienable right that its citizens automatically possess. Only authoritarian governments curb their citizens’ inalienable freedoms.
Listening to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk today, one could be forgiven for thinking human rights were hers to give, and hers to take away. The Premier, speaking in Brisbane, described the easing of restrictions on movement and association from December 17 as a “reward” for vaccinated people.
“People who are vaccinated have absolutely stepped up and done the right thing and you deserve to keep your freedoms,” she said, straight-faced.
If you expected the self-annointed gatekeepers of freedom — CNN, for instance, had the chutzpah to try and usurp Remembrance Day to place journalists on a par with soldiers, as defenders of freedom — to voice even the mildest disapproval of such dictatorial arrogance, think again. For all their self-righteous blatherskite about “speaking truth to power”, the mainstream media have done nothing during the pandemic but speak lies for power.
It is astonishing to me that Australian politicians can speak in this authoritarian tone and receive, as if their due, nothing but approving nods from the press gallery.
Brisbane? Beijing? What’s the difference these days? Not much evidently.
If vaccinated people “deserve” basic freedoms then, by implication, the 20% of Queenslanders who are not vaccinated, are undeserving.
Think about that. If a perfectly healthy person has decided — for whatever reason – that they don’t want to be vaccinated, they are now deemed undeserving of basic rights we all took for granted less than two years ago.
If the vaccinated are being “rewarded”, then, ipso facto, the unvaccinated are being punished.
It is one thing to say that unvaccinated people are unwise. It is another thing altogether to say they are undeserving of basic human rights in their own country of birth.
Yet, that is what even supposed warriors of freedom like Noam Chomsky advocate. Like an old school commissar, Chomsky declared that the unvaccinated should be exiled and left to starve.
Regardless of our views on the vaccine, is this really the kind of country we want to live in?
Spectator Australia
For a great many bootlickers and bullies, apparently yes. If you’ve ever wondered where someone would have stood in the 1930s, just take note of their response to the pandemic and to vaccine mandates.
You’ll soon know who would have been the ones clicking their heels and throwing out the Roman salutes.
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