{"id":17073,"date":"2022-02-02T12:39:32","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T17:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=17073"},"modified":"2022-02-02T22:57:57","modified_gmt":"2022-02-03T03:57:57","slug":"is-freedom-public-enemy-number-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2022\/02\/02\/is-freedom-public-enemy-number-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Freedom Public Enemy Number One?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Media War on Canadian Truckers: Is Freedom Public Enemy Number One?<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/h2>\n
by <\/span>James Bovard<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
\n

The denigration of the Canadian trucker protest convoy<\/a> exemplifies how freedom is now the biggest villain of the Covid-19 pandemic. A Washington Post <\/em>cartoonist portrayed the trucker convoy as \u201cfascism\u201d incarnate<\/a> while another Post<\/em> column derided the \u201ctoxic \u2018Freedom Convoy<\/a>.\u2019\u201d Anyone who resists any government command is apparently now a public enemy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The trucker protest was spurred by the Canadian government\u2019s sweeping Covid vaccine mandate. Many truckers believe the risks of the vaccine outweighs the benefit and, more importantly, that they have the right to control their own bodies. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared on Monday, \u201cThere is no place in our country for threats, violence or hatred<\/a>.\u201d Except for the hatred Trudeau whips up by denouncing vaccine mandate opponents as \u201cracist\u201d and \u201cmisogynistic<\/a>.\u201d And except for the \u201cthreats\u201d and \u201cviolence\u201d used by government enforcement agents to compel submission to any pandemic decree issued by Trudeau or other politicians.<\/p>\n

Since the start of this pandemic, many people who boasted of their trust in \u201cscience and data\u201d also believed that absolute power would keep them safe. According to their scorecard, anyone who objected to government commands was the equivalent of a heretic who must be condemned if not banished from everyplace except the cemetery.<\/strong> North of the border, Quebec epitomizes this intolerance<\/a> with its new edict prohibiting unvaccinated individuals from shopping at Costco or Walmart.<\/p>\n

The same critics who latch onto any obnoxious behavior by a few wayward Canadian truckers (MSNBC denounced them as a \u201ccult\u201d)<\/a>\u2019 to condemn freedom are also happy to exonerate any American politician who pointlessly destroyed freedom during the pandemic with bizarre edicts. In December 2020, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti banned all unnecessary \u201ctravel, including, without limitation,<\/a> travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit.\u201d The mayor (who was caught violating California mask mandates at the NFC championship game) offered no evidence to justify placing four million residents under house arrest. Governor Ralph Northam dictated<\/a> that all Virginians must stay indoors from midnight until 5 a.m, with a few narrow exceptions. Federal judge William Stickman IV condemned Pennsylvania\u2019s restrictions: \u201cBroad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion<\/a> of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n

Preventing politicians from obliterating freedom is now the worst form of tyranny.<\/strong> On Thanksgiving Eve 2020, the Supreme Court struck down Gov. Andrew Cuomo\u2019s edict that limited religious gatherings in New York to ten or fewer people while permitting far more leeway for businesses to operate. The Court declared that Cuomo\u2019s rules were \u201cfar more restrictive than any Covid-related regulations <\/u><\/a>that have previously come before the Court\u2026 and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus.\u201d An American Civil Liberties Union official fretted that \u201cthe freedom to worship<\/u><\/a>\u2026 does not include a license to harm others or endanger public health.\u201d Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe and Cornell professor Michael Dorf warned that the Supreme Court was becoming \u201ca place like Gilead <\/u><\/a>\u2014 the theocratic and misogynist country in Margaret Atwood\u2019s dystopian \u2018The Handmaid\u2019s Tale.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Many progressives talk as if America faces a choice between reckless freedom and paternalism – i.e., submission to a benevolent elite. But regardless of Fauci\u2019s boundless conceit, omniscient officials have yet to come to the rescue. Government agencies have blundered catastrophically since the start of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

The Centers for Disease Control bollixed America\u2019s initial response by sending out faulty, contaminated test kits<\/a> to health agencies that failed to detect the rapidly spreading virus. Governors panicked and shut down schools, resulting in vast losses in learning and widening the achievement gap between affluent and low-income students. The vast majority of small businesses were locked down and thousands were bankrupted in a futile effort to prevent an airborne virus from continuing to spread. Placing scores of millions of people under house arrest led to record-breaking fatalities for drug overdoses<\/a> and a tidal wave of depression and anxiety. New York City\u2019s covid vaccine passport regime failed to prevent the Big Apple from becoming the hottest spot in the nation for the omicron variant.<\/p>\n

President Biden portrayed the vaccines as a magic bullet and falsely promised<\/a> that people who got injected would not get Covid. The C.D.C. stopped counting \u201cbreakthrough\u201d<\/a> cases of Covid among the fully vaccinated, paving the way for a resurgence of the virus that has now infected more than 70 million<\/a> Americans. Or maybe 200+ million Americans since C.D.C. previously stated that only one in four cases<\/a> are diagnosed and reported. Whatever. The Food and Drug Administration is seeking to delay fully disclosing<\/a> Pfizer\u2019s application for its Covid vaccine approval for 75 years. After Biden issued a mandate that forced hospitals to fire healthy unvaccinated nurses, the CDC said it was OK for hospitals to rely on Covid positive nurses t<\/a>o treat patients \u2013 one of the biggest absurdities of the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Freedom is not a panacea for every challenge in life. But it is far superior to boundless submission to tinhorn dictators who know far less than they claim. Politicians like Trudeau and Biden who fuel mass rage against any group that does not kowtow to officialdom are sowing seeds of hatred that will proliferate long after the pandemic ends<\/strong>. In the long run, people have more <\/strong>to fear from politicians than from viruses.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Media War on Canadian Truckers: Is Freedom Public Enemy Number One? by James Bovard The denigration of the Canadian trucker protest convoy exemplifies how freedom is now the biggest villain of the Covid-19 pandemic. A Washington Post cartoonist portrayed the trucker convoy as \u201cfascism\u201d incarnate while another Post column derided the \u201ctoxic \u2018Freedom Convoy.\u2019\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2124,3157,3159,2316,2578,305,3161,3160,3162,3158,2950,257,2889],"class_list":["post-17073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-biden","tag-canada","tag-convoy","tag-covid-19","tag-mandate","tag-protest","tag-quebec","tag-racists","tag-ralph-northan","tag-truckers","tag-vaccine","tag-virginia","tag-william-stickman"],"yoast_head":"\nIs Freedom Public Enemy Number One? - James Bovard<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Media condemnations of Canadian trucker protest exemplify how freedom is now public enemy #1 for many supporters of Covid crackdowns\" \/>\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\/2022\/02\/02\/is-freedom-public-enemy-number-one\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is Freedom Public Enemy Number One? 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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. 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