Is freedom public enemy number one? | Eastern North Carolina Now

Authored 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 “fascism” incarnate while another Post column derided the “toxic ‘Freedom Convoy.’” Anyone who resists any government command is apparently now a public enemy.

The trucker protest was spurred by the Canadian government’s 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, “There is no place in our country for threats, violence or hatred.” Except for the hatred Trudeau whips up by denouncing vaccine mandate opponents as “racist” and “misogynistic.” And except for the “threats” and “violence” used by government enforcement agents to compel submission to any pandemic decree issued by Trudeau or other politicians.

Since the start of this pandemic, many people who boasted of their trust in “science and data” 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. North of the border, Quebec epitomizes this intolerance with its new edict prohibiting unvaccinated individuals from shopping at Costco or Walmart.

The same critics who latch onto any obnoxious behavior by a few wayward Canadian truckers (MSNBC denounced them as a “cult”)’ 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 “travel, including, without limitation, travel on foot, bicycle, scooter, motorcycle, automobile, or public transit.” 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 that all Virginians must stay indoors from midnight until 5 a.m, with a few narrow exceptions. Federal judge William Stickman IV condemned Pennsylvania’s restrictions: “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.”

Preventing politicians from obliterating freedom is now the worst form of tyranny. On Thanksgiving Eve 2020, the Supreme Court struck down Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 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’s rules were “far more restrictive than any Covid-related regulations that have previously come before the Court… and far more severe than has been shown to be required to prevent the spread of the virus.” An American Civil Liberties Union official fretted that “the freedom to worship… does not include a license to harm others or endanger public health.” Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe and Cornell professor Michael Dorf warned that the Supreme Court was becoming “a place like Gilead — the theocratic and misogynist country in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’”

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’s boundless conceit, omniscient officials have yet to come to the rescue. Government agencies have blundered catastrophically since the start of the pandemic.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/media-war-canadian-truckers-freedom-public-enemy-number-one