{"id":16090,"date":"2021-06-16T10:10:24","date_gmt":"2021-06-16T14:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=16090"},"modified":"2021-06-20T22:18:54","modified_gmt":"2021-06-21T02:18:54","slug":"defining-down-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/16\/defining-down-freedom\/","title":{"rendered":"Defining Down Freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"
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American Institute for Economic Research, June 16, 2021<\/h3>\n

Defining Down Freedom<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/header>\n
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\"JamesJames Bovard<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Will the Great Pandemic permanently unleash governments around the world? Covid-19 is enabling politicians to turn freedom from an individual right into a conditional bureaucratic dispensation. Defining down freedom was exemplified by the G-7 Summit that became a ludicrous and hypocritical Lockdowners Victory Lap.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The G-7 leaders, meeting in Cornwall, issued a communique pledging to \u201cprotect individuals from forced labour<\/a> and to ensure that global supply chains are free from the use of forced labour.\u201d But the political bosses had no concern about \u201cforced non-labor\u201d \u2013 their own decrees that destroyed tens of millions of jobs. That was no problem because, as the G-7 leaders boasted, \u201cWe have provided unprecedented support to citizens and businesses\u2026 totalling over $12 trillion including fiscal support and liquidity measures.\u201d<\/p>\n

But handouts are no substitute for freedom and self-reliance. Government aid is always only one decree away from mandating terms of submission. In 1942, the Supreme Court declared, \u201cIt is hardly lack of due process<\/a> for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes.\u201d The G-7 Summiteers proclaimed a boatload of environmental goals. Will future \u201cstimulus payments\u201d be restricted to people who reduce their \u201ccarbon footprint\u201d or abandon their non-electric vehicles?<\/p>\n

The Biden administration was thrilled that G-7 Summiteers adapted its slogan, \u201cBuild Back Better,\u201d in the communique. That slogan will entitle politicians to snare more revenue and power to repair the damage from the shutdowns they inflicted. Biden-style rebuilding presumes that any government spending confers vast benefits, at least on politicians. Biden\u2019s colleagues also seconded his call for placing at least 30% of all land<\/a> and water under government restrictions in the name of conservation.<\/p>\n

G-7 leaders enjoyed parties and plenty of backslapping \u2013 privileges denied to nearby British citizens whose lives continue semi-paralyzed by pervasive government restrictions. Brits were told that their lockdown misery would end on June 21, which became known as \u201cFreedom Day.\u201d But British politicians have invoked the fear of new variants to justify extending the lockdown at least another month and possibly far longer. Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared on Monday, \u201cNow is the time to ease off the accelerator<\/a>,\u201d regardless of how many individual rights become roadkill. Spiked editor Brendan O\u2019Neil declared that \u201cthis further suspension of liberty, is only possible in a society that has thoroughly devalued<\/a> freedom\u201d and derided the \u201ccreeping embrace of the lockdown lifestyle among significant sections of the Smart Set.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the U.S., President Joe Biden designated the Fourth of July as Americans\u2019 shrink-wrapped \u201cFreedom Day.\u201d<\/strong> On March 11, Biden declared that, if people obey government decrees, \u201cthere\u2019s a good chance you, your families and friends, will be [permitted] to get together in your backyard<\/a> or in your neighborhood and have a cookout or a barbecue and celebrate Independence Day.\u201d Biden repeated his declaration on April 21: \u201cTo celebrate our independence<\/a> from this virus on July 4th with family and friends in small groups\u2026. We all need to mask up\u2026 until everyone has a chance to get their shot.\u201d Biden converted the Fourth of July into a benchmark of submission to presidential decrees. On May 4, Biden announced that he wanted 70% of American adults<\/a> to have at least one Covid vaccine by July 4. On June 2, Biden declared that people should \u201cexercise your freedom<\/a>\u201d to get vaccinated so Americans can enjoy a \u201csummer of freedom.\u201d Freedom to get politically-mandated injections was not one of the clauses included in the Bill of Rights. Regardless of the Biden administration\u2019s alarmism, most states have already lifted lockdown orders.<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s attempted expropriation of Independence Day had no impact on his honeymoon with the media. When the Pulitzer Prizes were bestowed last Friday, no awards were given for exposing the frauds and follies of repressive Covid-19 policies that ravaged prosperity and freedom. Instead, the Pulitzer for Public Service<\/a> was awarded to a New York Times<\/em> team that included Donald McNeil. As Jeffrey Tucker reported, early during the pandemic, McNeil fanned fear with a bizarre article headlined, \u201cTo Take On the Coronavirus, Go Medieval on It<\/a>.\u201d He urged American policymakers to rely on tactics \u201cfrom the era of the Black Death\u2026 pen terrified citizens up inside their poisoned cities\u2026 Harsh measures horrify civil libertarians, but they often save lives, especially when they are imposed in the early days.\u201d McNeil turbocharged his alarmism by overestimating the likely death toll by over 20-fold. Ironically, at a time when the American media has become far more critical of police power, pundits have consecrated bureaucratic power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Covid era, destroying freedom is a negligible loss, akin to a government agency misplacing a few hundred filing cabinets.<\/strong> Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti faced minimal criticism last December when he banned all unnecessary \u201ctravel<\/a>, including, without limitation, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit.\u201d The mayor offered no evidence to justify placing four million residents under house arrest. Similar restrictions hit residents of Michigan, New York, Oregon, and other states. Federal judge William Stickman IV aptly declared last September, \u201cBroad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept<\/a> of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.\u201d But the scant controversy over lockdowns is a sign that many media outlets are happy to see liberty \u201cinverted\u201d into unquestioning obedience to any command issued by any government official.<\/p>\n

Politicians could decimate freedom because their Covid-19 decrees almost instantly became hallowed with the aura of \u201cscience\u201d \u2013 regardless of how often the official guidanc<\/strong>e changed. Since Biden became president, Covid vaccines have also become sacrosanct and casting any doubts on their safety or efficacy is portrayed as proof of idiocy or villainy. Politicians and their media allies now talk as if the only reliable gauge of health and safety is the percentage of Americans who have been injected (ignoring the natural immunity that the 115 million people<\/a> who had Covid infections enjoy). The result is a long series of socialist-style victory proclamations, substituting the number of arms injected for bogus statistics on the wheat harvest from collective farms. And anyone who refuses to be vaccinated is the new Kulak, reviled and portrayed as a dire threat to the survival of everything decent. It would not be surprising if politicians limited future Covid handouts to individuals who could prove they were vaccinated.<\/p>\n

Many Americans presume that the political travails of Covid are mostly in the rearview mirror. The small print of the G-7 Communique is hell on such optimism. \u201cThe COVID-19 pandemic is not under control anywhere<\/a> until it is under control everywhere,\u201d the Summiteers warned. And as long as the pandemic is out of control, rulers must remain unleashed. If anyone has the virus, then no one is free \u2013 or at least no one should be permitted to be free. The prerogatives and precedents that multiplied during the Covid pandemic are waiting to be exploited for the next viral outbreak \u2013 or maybe simply to make some really dramatic gestures on climate change.<\/p>\n

The G-7 Communique endlessly promised \u201ctransparency\u201d but only fools should expect official candor during pandemics or other politically-proclaimed emergencies. British scientists who shaped government Covid policies recently admitted using \u201cunethical\u201d and \u201cdystopian\u201d fearmongering to terrorize people into submission. One scientist declared that \u201cusing fear smacks of totalitarianism<\/a>,\u201d and another scientist admitted being \u201c<\/strong>stunned by the weaponization of behavioral psychology\u201d to enforce compliance with Covid dictates.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

American politicians and government agencies relied on many of the same fear tactics in this country. Docile media helped sway people to view other Americans\u2019 freedom as the deadliest threat to their own health. Instead, the biggest danger citizens faced was that their rulers would not have sufficient power to force everyone else to stop working, stop worshipping, stay inside, and get injected.<\/strong><\/p>\n

No-fault Czars are no substitute for individual liberty. Politicians vindicated lockdowns by claiming that all the sacrifices are justified if they \u201csave just one life.\u201d But what about \u201cjust one freedom\u201d \u2013 especially freedoms previously enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people? Instead of \u201cBuild Back Better\u201d further empowering reckless rulers, we need to \u201cBuild Back Freer.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American Institute for Economic Research, June 16, 2021 Defining Down Freedom James Bovard Will the Great Pandemic permanently unleash governments around the world? Covid-19 is enabling politicians to turn freedom from an individual right into a conditional bureaucratic dispensation. Defining down freedom was exemplified by the G-7 Summit that became a ludicrous and hypocritical Lockdowners […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2124,2559,2886,869,2316,2888,2043,45,2885,2752,2890,2576,2313,2887,24,2889],"class_list":["post-16090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biden","tag-boris-johnson","tag-brendan-oneil","tag-britain","tag-covid-19","tag-eric-garcetti","tag-fourth-of-july","tag-freedom","tag-g-7","tag-jeffrey-tucker","tag-kulaks","tag-los-angeles","tag-pandemic","tag-pulitzer-prizes","tag-supreme-court","tag-william-stickman"],"yoast_head":"\nDefining Down Freedom - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Covid-19 is enabling politicians to turn freedom from an individual right into a conditional bureaucratic dispensation.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2021\/06\/16\/defining-down-freedom\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Defining Down Freedom - 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The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16090"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16109,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16090\/revisions\/16109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}