I am going to be 70 years old this year. I have been studying freedom for over 50 years. My mantra, prior to this week, has been that whomever first brings up the Nazis in an argument loses the argument. Well, today, I am going to talk about the proposed vaccine passport. This document providing proof of COVID19 vaccinations will be used to allow the bearer access to various public and private services, public transportation, public education, government buildings, grocery stores, restaurants, entertainment venues, private schools, and other private and public offices and businesses.
The consequences of this imminent public policy should be distressing to all. The problem we all face is when has the time come to put your foot down and say, “No!” Obviously, when the door to the gas chamber is closing behind you, it’s too late. Arguably, when the jackbooted thugs, wearing government uniforms and bearing guns, order you to get in the box car to be transported to the “re-education” facility is too late. Is it also too late when the government and a compliant majority require you to bear evidence of your status as unvaccinated in the form of a yellow star sewn into your clothes saying “unvaccinated,” or, in the modern version, in a vaccine passport app on your cell phone?
The Nazis were defeated only six years before I was born in May 1945. I am deeply concerned that many young Americans, ignorant of history, will not understand my references to “gas chambers,” “box cars,” and “a yellow star sewn into your clothes.” As victims of a modern government education, I fully expect that many will not have been taught the history of Holocaust.
Some Germans, to this day, experience existential guilt because of their government’s crimes during the first half of the twentieth century. I have always been baffled by the willingness of some part of the German population in the 1930s and 1940s to participate in the persecution and murder of as many as six million Jewish people, as well as Romani travelers, homosexuals, and people with disabilities. I think that now I understand.
People are motivated by honor, fear, and personal profit. Fear, for many, is the ultimate motivation. People have been terrified by the amplification of the COVID19 virus threat by the government, by the media, and by Big Pharma. Fear is the key. Many terrified Americans are ready to take any action, moral or immoral, peaceful or brutally violent, rational or irrational, in order to escape their terror of COVID19. Many Americans are panicked. Many Germans in the 1930s and 1940s were afraid. Some Germans sanctioned, in whole or in part, the actions leading up to the Holocaust. Many Americans in the 2020s are afraid. Some Americans will sanction, in whole or in part, the dismantling of the remaining freedoms Americans enjoy.
The Core Argument for Freedom:
We are each responsible for our own survival. A cow in its farmer’s field is not responsible for its own survival. The cow is fed and protected by its farmer. In the end, the cow is butchered by the farmer for food.
Each of us knows that in order to survive we must perceive, think, judge, and act in accordance with our judgments. You and I engage in these activities (perception, thinking, judging, and acting) every waking minute of every day. Freedom is the word that captures the idea of individuals perceiving, thinking, judging, and acting. Freedom is the individual’s claim that she has a right to perceive, think, judge, and act. These are the means of our survival. The formal definition of freedom is the protection of private property rights by the rule of law. Property rights are the moral claim to perceiving, thinking, judging, and acting. Keeping the results of perceiving, thinking, judging, and acting is part of property rights, as is bearing the consequences of failing to think or act. Protection of the individual’s right to perceive, think, judge, and act is only legitimate function of government.
The vaccine passport is designed explicitly to overrule the individual’s perceiving, thinking, judging, and acting. As such, the vaccine passport is an existential threat to human life. The vaccine passport overrules our means of survival. The vaccine passport must be opposed with the greatest vigor. That is the core argument.
The public policy argument for vaccine passports is based upon scientism. Scientism is the idea that science should dictate all public policy, the scientist as dictator. Again, we will make another historical reference that only 1% of Americans will get because they are victims of public education. Trofim Lysenko (1898-1976) was a Russian scientist who conceived of an agriculture theory called “deep plowing.” This procedure and other “reforms” were adopted by the government in Communist China during the period of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962). Between 15 and 55 million people died. This democide (death at the hands of government) occurred during my lifetime and few Americans under age 30 have even heard of the man or the event. Most Americans are unaware of the murder of 55 million Chinese people. I hope our ignorance does not doom us to repeat such atrocity.
Science is an unqualified good for humankind. Scientism – and the politicization of scientific consensus to serve non-science goals – is an unqualified evil.
The epistemological problem (how do we know what we think we know) is discovering what the evidence suggest to us and testing those theories. When evidence and outcomes are manipulated by politics, beneath the veneer of unimpeachable science, the ethical problem is insurmountable.
It is fair to say, I hope, that most Americans have awareness that we have been the victim of many lies during 2020. It is also fair to say that we Americans are not in agreement about who was lying and about what.
Again, the point is that different people consider different ideas and have different results. We as individuals must be free to perceive, think, judge, and act in order to survive. A dictatorship of science cannot allow their cows to perceive, think, judge, and act on their own. The vaccine passport will be a powerful weapon in the government’s arsenal.
We are on the verge of being slaughtered by our would-be farmers—governments, main stream media, and the social media platforms. Now is the time to say: “No!”
A reminder that opinions expressed by guest writers and contributors represent their own personal views, and not necessarily those of the Libertarian Party of Georgia, or any institutions or organizations with which the guest writer may be affiliated. You can reach Martin at CowenforCongress dot com; on Twitter at @mlcowen; and on Facebook at CowenforCongress).
