COVID Authoritarianism Paved the Way for Biden’s Socialist Tyranny By J.B. Shurk
It has become commonplace to hear Dementia Joe and his communist cohorts divide the world between “democratic nations” and “authoritarian regimes.” In his recent prime-time address declaring war on MAGA Americans, Pretend President Biden extolled “democracy” thirty-one times. It seems as if the more Biden assumes the role of a dictator, the more inclined he is to proclaim himself democracy’s “savior.” This kind of Napoleon complex is hardly unusual with Marxists. Socialist regimes always arrive under the pretense of protecting the people, yet, as Lord Acton persistently warned, socialism remains “the worst enemy freedom has ever had to encounter.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said explicitly this last week that not agreeing with the majority “is an extreme way of thinking,” while simultaneously accusing Trump-supporters of representing an “extremist threat to our democracy.” Anyone who doubts that majorities can be just as vicious as brutal dictators need only survey the aftermath of a torch and pitchfork mob. Mob rule is democracy at its simplest and no friend to human liberty. It is worth noting that after the elections of both President Donald Trump in 2016 and Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2019, socialists, Antifa domestic terrorists, anti-Brexiteers, and other leftists took to the streets in huge mobs, clashing with police and chanting, “This is what democracy looks like.” Protest mobs have no illusions about what democracy means.
The antipode of authoritarianism is not democracy, but rather inviolable individual rights. America’s Founding Fathers, who were at the forefront of the Enlightenment’s revolutionary advance toward the protection of human liberty, fully grasped this distinction. It is why the U.S. Constitution, as short as it is, doesn’t just say, “Whoever gets the most popular votes shall decide the law.” Power is divided between the states and the national government. The national government is further divided into three separate, coequal branches. The national government’s legitimate powers are explicitly delineated, and all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are vested with the individual states or their citizens. An Electoral College protecting each state’s respective voice elects the president and vice president. And the Bill of Rights reaffirms Americans’ natural liberties by stating clearly certain individual rights that no government may infringe — whether or not that government is expressing the wishes of the American majority. This diffuse arrangement of ultimate authority, where power is divided among the federal branches, the states, and even the people themselves, is the heart of the American system’s guarantee against authoritarianism.
So why do Puppet President Biden and his commie crew speak so much of democracy and so little of individual rights? Well, looking at the rudimentary breakdown of power above, a rather cynical answer is obvious. When individual rights are recognized as providing each person with inviolable political powers, then those powers remain untouchable by politicians and bureaucrats. When people are conditioned to believe that their rights are determined through mob democracy, however, a politician requires only a simple majority to tell you what you may or may not do. No matter how many politicians pretend otherwise, democracy without individual rights is just mob-backed authoritarianism — dictatorship with a brilliant public relations makeover!
Is this distinction important? Absolutely. Almost everything Americans have endured over the last two-plus years of COVID-1984 hysteria is a result of politicians and bureaucrats intentionally rejecting the inviolability of individual rights and instead asserting that draconian government policies are backed by majority approval. Whether lockdowns and medical mandates ever enjoyed majority support is disputable, but by far the most consequential effect of American policy since the pandemic’s arrival has been its deliberate sidestepping of Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed and inalienable rights. Do politicians exercise lawfully delegated powers when they deny Americans religious freedom by forcibly closing houses of worship and forbidding Americans from praying together? Do politicians have the power to shut down places of business without compensating Americans for their lost earnings and lost properties? Can politicians legitimately censor Americans’ free speech and public debate simply by labeling any information with which the government disagrees or dislikes “misinformation”? Can the president require federal employees and military service members to inject foreign substances into their bodies, even when doing so violates their religious and conscientious objections? Can unelected government bureaucrats enact arbitrary and capricious rules regulating travel, public assembly, and commerce by claiming that scientific opinion has higher constitutional authority than the Bill of Rights?
These questions, some of which are being litigated in federal and state courts, strike at the heart of the U.S. Constitution, and how they are answered will fundamentally change Americans’ lasting relationship with their government. Should government agencies succeed in permanently justifying the usurpation of powers once held solely by individual Americans, then the Bill of Rights and the Constitution’s explicit limitations upon federal authority mean little. Freedom and rights will have been replaced, at best, by some vague notion of democratic majoritarianism and, at worst, by a bureaucratic prerogative founded upon a cult of expertise. Neither rule by experts nor mobs is conducive to American liberty.
Interestingly, now that Darth Lord Fauci has announced his impending retirement, he has stated vociferously that he holds no responsibility for prolonged lockdowns or school closures across the country. In a recent interview with Neil Cavuto, Fauci says starkly, “I didn’t shut down anything.” Easily accessible video evidence of numerous past interviews, however, shows that Fauci has been a relentless voice for government-imposed shutdowns. In the same interview, he also claims that lockdowns never “irreparably damaged anyone.” Mounting evidence suggests otherwise, including studies demonstrating that forced masking, government-imposed lockdowns, and remote learning “have had a much more detrimental impact on society than they have produced any benefit.” A new report based on health figures from the United Kingdom supports the conclusion that the effects of lockdowns are now more lethal than the COVID-19 virus. Even CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen, who has strongly advocated for masking, segregating the unvaccinated, and other authoritarian restrictions these past two years, now agrees that “the decision to wear a mask should shift from a government mandate to an individual choice.” She says, “The science has changed.”
With Senator Rand Paul and others warning the National Institutes of Health to preserve all documents and other evidence related to Darth Fauci’s pandemic response, however, it is just as easy to conclude that it is the politics surrounding COVID-19 that has really changed. As more lockdown-supporting leftists are forced to recognize the unprecedented damage forced school closures and other government-imposed shutdowns have caused to the economy, childhood development, and non-COVID-related general health, those extraordinary assertions of government power over Americans’ erstwhile-protected individual liberties not only seem unwise but also quite deadly.
If the government’s reaction to COVID is understood as having little to do with public health and everything to do with advancing authoritarian socialism, however, then the tyrannical policies of the last two years have been a smashing success. Biden’s new COVID czar Dr. Ashish Jha admitted, after all, that “the goal … is not to go back to normal … but to build a very different new normal that has equity much more at the heart of it.” Ah, yes, “equity” — the gold standard of socialist dictators everywhere.
If only there were a legal document in existence that would have preserved Americans’ freedoms while keeping outrageous government power grabs in check. Oh, right, we have one of those — the U.S. Constitution and its Bill of Rights. If our “rulers” spoke more of those documents and less of “democracy,” we’d all be more secure and better off today. Instead, Biden, his political enablers, and the vast, unelected bureaucracy lit a bonfire and burned our rights to ashes.
Comments are closed.
