DISregarding the Facts and Reactionary to Its Marrow: If only black historians can truly know what is at stake in “black history,” it must follow that only whites must be able to know “white history”

The New York Times publishes a new defense of its ludicrous 1619 Project (“The 1619 Project and the Long Battle Over U.S. History” by Jake Silverstein) to prepare public opinion for the release of a book version of the project titled The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story.

This is too much for the Tom Mackaman, who strikes back in true form (thanks to Instapundit). pointing out that "in the end [Silverstein's] discussion of historiography is a red herring," the talented WSWS journalist charges the editor-in-chief of the New York Times Magazine with a "brief and reckless foray into historical methodology aims to provide a permission slip for the 1619 Project’s disregarding of facts, whenever these contradict the settled-upon “narrative”."

 … neither can the 1619 Project abandon its position that African American history is only truly knowable by blacks. So, Silverstein quotes approvingly from Professor Martha S. Jones, of Johns Hopkins University, who believes that black historians have a superior understanding of the past. “History is a science, a social science, but it’s also politics,” Jones is quoted as saying. “And Black historians have always known that. They always know the stakes [emphasis added].”

It must be bluntly stated that this sort of quasi-biological determinism—that “races” somehow have greater capacity to understand “their own history” than other “races”—shares a fundamental precept with the Nazi conception of history writing, in which only gentile Germans, not Jews, could truly fathom German history. It does not seem to occur to Prof. Jones, Silverstein or [Nikole] Hannah-Jones that the racial claim to true knowledge of history negates their own position. If only black historians can truly know what is at stake in “black history,” it must follow that only whites must be able to know “white history.” It follows that black historians should not concern themselves with episodes of history in which the actors were predominantly white—for example, the political history of the American Revolution or Civil War. This viewpoint is obviously reactionary to its marrow. 

It was the same thing almost 10 years ago when Ann Coulter was a guest on The View. The conservative pundit was trying to make a point about "race-mongering" from her new book, Mugged, when she was interrupted by Whoopi Goldberg, saying "Tell me how much you know about being black!" Well, if Ann Coulter cannot make a point (conservative, liberal, or other) about race because she doesn't have the experience of blacks, then neither can any of the white liberal hosts on the ABC show. 

And, to turn things around, how much do Whoopi and other blacks (like-minded or conservative) know about… being white? And where on Earth does all that leave any semblance of debate and discussion?! (Of course, the double standards are due to the liberals' claim — whatever the color of their skin — that, due to their unparalleled genius, they have figured everything and everybody out.)

Tu return to the 1619 Project, last year, Commentary's Noah Rothman finished an article with the words that 

Students should learn the history first and argue over it later.

What Nobody Tells You About Indians and Other Native Americans

Every time I hear about the tragedy (the tragedies) suffered by the Indians of North America (whether at Thanksgiving or at other times), I bring up some variant of the following questions: 

Do the calamities also include the theft of the lands of the Apaches? Does the genocide, real or alleged, of the Native Americans also concern the extermination of the Huron tribe (Huronia)?

This type of question usually boondoggles the leftist, whose eyes grow like saucers and who waffles trying to reply, since in his eagerness to sum up American and world history by meting out simplified explanations in one-sentence platitudes (that conveniently, and invariably, happen to be damning towards Americans, i.e., white Americans), he has neither had nor taken the time to think any details through as he attempts to display his alleged expertise as a modern-day genius.

The problem, of course, is that the lands of the Apaches were stolen by the Comanches.

While the Hurons were wiped out by the Iroquois. 

Or, as Allan W Eckert put it regarding another neighboring tribe of the Iroquois (aka the League of the Six Nations of the Iroquois), this one from northwesternmost Pennsylvania,

the Six Nations annihilated [the Erighs or the Eries] — every man, woman, and child being slain, the tribe was wiped out of existence.

But apart from that — apart from those tiny and utterly inconsequential details that we can posthaste proceed to forget and ignore — it is surely indisputable to posit that all "Native Americans" are, and were, spiritual peacemakers in harmony with nature and with the Earth, as well as something akin to Tibet's Buddhist monks. (And with that said, let's turn off the sarcasm faucet…)

After conquering the Aztec and the Inca empires, in addition to large parts of South America as well as all of Central America, why did the Spanish armies not march further into North America (where the English had remained along the Atlantic coast while the French were focused on Québec and had barely crossed West across the Mississippi)? 

The answer is the Comanche tribe, which was (I am prepared to apologize for the upcoming un-PC term beforehand) the bloodthirstiest people the Spanish superpower had ever encountered, and which brought the Spaniards' advance to an abrupt halt in Tejas (in Texas).

Indeed, in his position as a military historian and a professor at the Sandhurst Military Academy, John Keegan described the Comanches as the fiercest warriors the planet has ever known. 

Incidentally, what do the names of the Indian tribes mean, anyway? They all mean the same thing (albeit in their respective languages) — the "people." And what was most tribes' names (again, in their respective languages) for their neighbors? The "enemy."

A few examples: The tribe which was called the Navajo by their neighbors (and thus by their enemies) called them selves the Diné, while the Iroquois (the "atrocious people" or the "murderers" — see the paragraph about the Huron tribe above for an explanation thereof) called themselves the Haudenosaunee (the "house builders"). As an aside, history recalls most of the tribes' names from what they were called by their neighbors, as white explorers and pathfinders would encounter the neighbors first and ask them the name of the tribe that they would meet when continuing their travels ahead.

Before we continue: here emerges an interesting question — cannot we say that the Native Americans show the extent of their indisputable humanity, as they seem to be quite familiar with that good ol' expression, the (wait for it) "enemy of the people" — just like "civilized" people did and do in Europe and the rest of the developed world (not least with Communists, Nazis, and similar bloodthirsty — please excuse the expression again — groups)?

In that perspective, this provides a response to the question, isn't it sad that the Indians never managed to unite against their white oppressors. The answer is that the quote that is often attributed to Philip Sheridan — "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" (what the general actually said was somewhat different) — would better describe the tribes' description of one another (The only good Sioux is a dead Sioux, etc…) When a group of warriors happened upon a group of enemies (not excluding women out berry-picking), they would kill them all (see also the Little Bighorn) and scalp them all (unless, in some cases, there happened to be young children who could be integrated into the tribe). This explains the "intolerant" attitude of White settlers, explains Time-Life's The Frontiersmen. In the 18th century,

frontiersmen, who had seen the bodies of pregnant women slit open by war parties and the fetuses of unborn babies left impaled on poles beside them, were not inclined to ponder the political attitudes of any Indian if granted opportunity for revenge.

On one memorable occasion, a group of Iroquois marched for days on end to raid another village while the latter's warriors were away (probably on their own raid). They launched their raid, and escaped with booty including a group of young boys as prisoners. When the raided camp's warriors came home a day or so later, the fathers, overcome with grief, immediately set upon chasing down the raiders on their own return home with their young prisoners boasting perhaps 24 hours' advance time. Every time they came to the remains of a camp where the Iroquois had bivouacked, they discovered to their horrors a thick pointed branch stuck into the ground upon which the Iroquois had in turn stuck… the decapitated head of one of the children. Cruelty? Sadism? Simply a form of cultural diversity? You decide…

Did the Indians really kill all of their enemies? No, that is not entirely correct.

Who doesn't know the “trail of tears and death," when Andrew Jackson expelled tens of thousands of Indians from East side of the Mississippi? During one 1,200-mile trek, "thousands … died from exposure, malnutrition, and disease" and the grounds were littered with the bodies of "red-skins" and "Negroes." Wait a minute, what did you say? "Negroes"? Blacks? What do you mean by that?! Oh, you didn't know? The Cherokees, who are often presented as one of prime examples that Indians were, or could be, civilized (they had their own alphabet and newspapers), practiced slavery.  Yes sir. And do not forget that a number of these Indians enlisted during the Civil War — on the side of the Confederacy. For sure, this was one of the “Five Civilized Tribes” (besides the Cherokee, the Chickasaw, the Creek, the Seminole, and the Choctaw) and, as it happens, one of the main slavery rebellions and escape attempts of the 19th century was a slave revolt against the cruelty of one particularly nasty Cherokee slave-owner.

Yup. I know, I know: I'm sorry I brought it up — slavery, as we all know, is only a shameful activity — everything is only a shameful activity — when practiced by Whites and (in the modern era) by capitalists, and never by "Reds" or Blacks (not excluding on the African continent) or for that matter, communists (also Reds, in a way) in China or the Soviet Union, with their slave-based laogais and gulags.

Those are historical facts liberals and Europeans don't know about and do not like to focus on, because if they can't depict the Indians as harmless, Buddhist-monk-like beings interested in nothing but peace and harmony with the Earth and with the forces of nature — as angelic and innocent victims — it becomes much harder to depict (white) Americans as monstrous beings and their policies (past as well as present) as of a criminal nature beyond any iota of redemption.

The funny thing — which also answers the question regarding Indian unification — is that the various Indian tribes were better treated by the whites than by their "red" neighbors. You can say what you want about Wounded Knee or Sand Creek, or reservations, as well as Indian schools that took their kids away, they were better (or, if you prefer, less bad) than what their Indian enemies had in store for them.

Thus it was natural that "Injuns" enlisted as scouts in the U.S. Cavalry to serve against their archenemies. In any case, it was such a warrior culture that made whites "reluctant," to say the least, to show "respect" for the Indians and their civilization (or lack thereof?) and which earned the latter, not entirely unreasonable, the moniker of "savages."

Finally: how exactly were the Indians' lands "stolen"? Even today, when a European decides to spend a holiday for a road trip through a country (or parts thereof) with 330 million inhabitants, he is amazed about haw large and empty that nation is (even on the East Coast — try driving from New York City to Niagara Falls). In the book Under Bjælken about Denmark's Crown Prince and future King, Jens Andersen writes that "that which Frederik and his friend Holger Foss best remember [from their 1993 road trip through the U.S. in a red Cadillac Eldorado Convertible], besides the numerous encounters with helpful and hospitable Americans, was the colossal monotony — mile after mile."

Related: Beginning in the early 19th century, why did one tenth of the Danish population, one quarter of the Swedish population, and one third of the Norwegian population emigrate to the United States? Because so many these "white privileged" blondes with blue eyes were so dirt-poor that they did not to live in, and did not want their children "to grow up in, slavery."

How, then, would it have been 150 or 250 years ago, when an Irish or German family in a chariot rolled slowly across a territory with 100 times fewer people? Most Indians were nomads and had never established cities or villages. Even for those who could be described differently, such as the Haudenosaunees (the long "house builders," that is, the Iroquois), it was necessary, due to a cultivation practice which ended up destroying the land, to uproot the village after at most 21 years and move it dozens of miles away. (So much for the "image of a Native American environmental ethic [which], however appealing, is more myth than reality.") 

Indeed, back in 1756, Bougainville wrote in his diary that "It is a shame that so fine a countryside should be without cultivation." Many years earlier, the chief agent of the Penn family, James Logan, had heard complaints that "it was against the laws of God and nature that so much land should be idle while Christians wanted it to labor on and raise their bread."

Whether it is Bedouins, Gypsies, or those whom Alexis de Tocqueville called "the wandering race of aborigenes," it has always been extremely difficult for nomads to live side by side with settlers. For instance, Indians, Gypsies (or Roma), or Bedouins are, or were, uniformly depicted as thieves. Today, this is automatically considered racist, but the universality of the charge should make you pause to think… And then you might come to this conclusion: when you have no permanent neighbors, a cavalier attitude towards those whom you rarely (and only briefly) meet and towards their possessions, then theft might in fact not a wholly illogical by-product of one's way of life. 

From Roman times, at least, it has been a reasonable rule (no, not a white/European rule; an entirely common-sense rule) that you cannot claim land as your own unless you devote a minimum of time inhabiting it and tending to it.

Let us imagine a wagon slowly pulled by oxen in the vast no-man's land. What does the family from Scotland or Sweden encounter day after day, week after week, other than dense virgin forests or monotonous prairies? At one time, the family finds a spot, maybe by a creek, upon which it decides to settle down. Then, perhaps after five or six months after their cabin has been built and their fields plowed without their ever seeing another soul, white or otherwise, is it strange, when a single solitary warrior, perhaps two or three, appear one day and claim that this land belongs to their tribe, that they answer, "But we have done so much to cultivate these plots — can't you just ride around them?"

To this must be added another remark: that it can also sound strange (if not an outright showcase for double standards) that it should be sinful to "steal" and to build upon the (untouched) lands that "belong to" the "noble" Indians, while it feels completely natural to confiscate the developed property (fields, gardens, buildings, mansions, castles, etc) of the white world's yucky "noblemen," and in general try to milk the rich with one tax after another.

Finally, an apology. I wish to apologize for the fact that I believe in facts and the truth, and I wish to apologize for the fact that I do not believe in the leftists' hysterical fairy tale.

Let us end this post with a passage from John Keegan's Warpaths and the military historian's remarks on the Indians' incapability "to defend what they held dearest, their freedom to roam as nomads inside territories they did not claim to own but nevertheless sought to use and enjoy by exclusive right":

Little wonder that the European immigrants who made their way onto the Great Plains in the nineteenth century, Slavs of Eastern Europe, Russians from the Steppe, peoples whose history was suffused with memories of oppression by galloping, sword-wielding, slaven, Magyar, Mongol, and Turkish nomads, should have felt so little pity in their hearts for those other Mongoloid nomads whose interest in life seemed to subsist in hunting, pillage, and war.

 … There is much. that is tragic in the story of native America's conflict with the European interlopers, particularly in the treatment of the Indians of the temperate forest lands east of the Mississippi by the young republic; the displacement of the Five Civilized Tribes to an utterly alien environment reeks of racialism.

Yet the pretensions of the Plains Indians to exclusive rights over the heartland of the continent cannot, it seems to me, stand. Their claim, the claim of less than a million people, to possess territories capable of supporting not only millions more directly settled, but of still more millions outside America waiting to be fed by those territories' product, is the claim not of oppressed primitives but of the selfish rich,

The Plains Indians were indeed primitives; but their primitivism was of the "hard," not "soft," variety. Here were not shy, self-effacing marginalists, like the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, the Semai of the Philippine jungles, or the pygmies of the African rainforests, but proud, warrior nomads, who had taken from the Europeans what they coveted as a means to support their way of life, the horse and the gun, and then refused Europeans any share of the lands which horse and gun equipped them … to exploit. 

Related History Posts:
• What Caused Secession and Ergo the Civil War? Was It Slavery and/or States' Rights? Or Wasn't It Rather Something Else — the Election of a Ghastly Republican to the White House?
• During the Winter of 1860-1861, Did the South's Democrats Obtain Their Aim — the Secession of 7 Slave States — Thanks to Elections Filled with Stealth, Lies, Voter Fraud, Intimidation, Violence, and Murder? (Wait 'til You Hear About… Georgia's Dark Secret)
• Wondering Why Slavery Persisted for Almost 75 Years After the Founding of the USA? According to Lincoln, the Democrat Party's "Principled" Opposition to "Hate Speech"
• The Greatest Myth in U.S. History: Yes, the Civil War Era Did Feature Champions of States' Rights, But No, They Were Not in the South (Au Contraire)
• Harry Jaffa on the Civil War Era: For Democrats of the 21st Century as of the 19th, "the emancipation from morality was/is itself seen as moral progress"
• Why Does Nobody Ever Fret About Scandinavia's — Dreadful — 19th-C Slavery Conditions?
• A Century and Half of Apartheid Policies: From Its 1828 Foundation, the Democrat Party Has Never Shed Its Racist Past
• The Confederate Flag: Another Brick in the Leftwing Activists' (Self-Serving) Demonization of America and Rewriting of History
• How to Prevent America from Becoming a Totalitarian State
• Inside of a month, Democrats have redefined riots and election challenges from the highest form of patriotism to an attack on democracy — And by “democracy”, they mean the Democrat Party
• Why They Don't Tell You the Whole Truth: The 1619 Project Summarized in One Single Sentence

Happy Thanksgiving to All; May Gratitude Enlighten Your Days and Enrich Your Life

Happy Thanksgiving to all the readers of No Pasarán!

As we recollect stories from the past, such as that of Pocahontas, it is time to remember and to be grateful for our ancestors, whether immediate (our mother and father) or further back, such as those who sacrificed to make America such a great nation.

Today we should remember the Native Americans as well. Colin G Calloway reports that 

New England Indians supplied the early Pilgrims with food and assistance, but, according to Robert Cushman in 1622, the English returned the favor:  "When any of them are in want, as often they are in the winter, when their corn is done, we supply them to our power, and have them in our houses eating and drinking."  

In some areas of colonial New England, Indians not only worked alongside English neighbors; they also live with them. Frontiersman Daniel Boone won renown as an Indian fighter but, in the words of his most recent biographer, Indians "knew they could find food, drink, and a place to sleep at the Boone homestead."

A story about the Crow people that I like is The Plains War Chief Who Fought The Nazis During World War II.

Related: What Nobody Tells You About Indians and Other Native Americans

Apart from that, check out Dennis Prager's fireside chat: 

This year’s Thanksgiving episode is about the greatest of all traits: Gratitude. It is the foundation of goodness and happiness. Yet today, young people are being taught to be ungrateful people. …

As it happens, Buzzfeed's Hannah Loewentheil is has showing how foreigners are often more grateful for America — and for (very) good reason — than Americans are. There are a few — notably nr 9, 20, and 26 — that I (deeply) disagree with, but here are a few where they hit the nail on the head…

11. "The freedom to be whatever you want. I don't mean career freedom, per se, but more the ability to express your personality. My friends who moved here from Germany and Canada felt that being different in those countries made you stick out like a sore thumb. But here in the US, people can be whoever they want to be."

… 

14. "America is full of wandering hype people. You never know when it will happen, but in America, people are always hyping each other up. They are usually complete strangers. Someone will cheer on another guy unwrapping his perfect burrito or the person ordering three extra shots of espresso at the coffee shop. Americans genuinely love watching people win, even if there’s no competition. We feel this weird sense of camaraderie when we share a moment of victory, and we love hyping each other up."

…

18. "The ability to turn right at a red light."

…

19. "The diversity of the 'American' experience. Globalization is well and alive here, and it's my favorite thing about living in the US. Where I live, there are revolving sushi bars, Russian bath houses, Korean grocery stores, Mexican restaurants, and Italian specialty markets."

…

22. "The interstate system. It is one of the safest and least congested road systems in the world. The fact that you can drive from New York to Los Angeles in relative comfort on flat, paved roads is an insane concept outside the US. It's like driving from Moscow to Madrid in a mostly-straight line with little risk of an accident. There's a gas station/convenience store, a restaurant, and a rest station every few miles."

No better place to take a road trip than in the good ol' US of A…

 

24. "Household appliances. The US takes this very seriously. I lived in Europe and hated the lack of dishwashers and clothing dryers. Americans definitely have the right idea here."

…

32. "Free public restrooms that are easy to find and relatively clean. Why do I have to pay $1 to pee in Europe?!"

Puzzling Out the Puzzle Pieces

The puzzle pieces of what has gone wrong are enormous, so much so that fitting two or three together is unwieldy, while attempting to piece all the pieces together is both a fantastical and terrifying project, overturning long-held dearly held assumptions about government, public safety, human worth, personal liberty, and the dignity of our lives. Simply put, piecing together the bigger picture puzzle is traumatizing. To protect ourselves, the puzzle pieces are commonly processed separately, which is to say without correlation.

Thus writes Damian Bennett, whose thesis (unless you call it his open mind) explains, directly or indirectly, the blindness of conservatives, notably of NeverTrumpers and of the GOP in Congress. (Thanks for the Instapundit link, Ed.) Damian, a longtime reader of No Pasarán, goes on to provide a plethora of useful information:

Things are not right. Not just this thing or that thing, but major things, multiple things. And these major multiple things have all gone wrong, seriously wrong, openly wrong in the recent span of the last five to six years — though some origins date back going on decades — bringing us to the now of now.

Is the above proposition credible? If you think not, then end of discussion. If yes, I would like to begin a discussion with you here about things gone wrong. 

The puzzle pieces of what has gone wrong are enormous, so much so that fitting two or three together is unwieldy, while attempting to piece all the pieces together is both a fantastical and terrifying project, overturning long-held dearly held assumptions about government, public safety, human worth, personal liberty, and the dignity of our lives. Simply put, piecing together the bigger picture puzzle is traumatizing. To protect ourselves, the puzzle pieces are commonly processed separately, which is to say without correlation. OR — or the more problematic defense is to see nothing at all. To see nothing at all explains why so much of what is wrong has gone wrong in plain sight.  

The first order of business is to identify the puzzle pieces. Below are some puzzle pieces, by no means all. I have curated links for each, sometimes with comment or takeaways, sometimes not; some are little propædeutics, others are simply illustrative. Some could easily slip from one rubric to another or another, because what's happening, what's going wrong, is of a piece, one thing feeds another. These are prods. They are only meant to get the ball rolling. Please feel free to enlarge. Provide your own. What may surprise some is that the source material here comes from both the right and the left, upsetting pat notions of political divides, of yesteryears' neat unbridgeable schisms. The NWO is not partisan. It is an appetite, the devourer that devours one and all.

Power. Shock and awe of the emergent ruling class.

The ruling class is certainly not new, but glutted on MMT fiat cash, they of late have come out the shadows to boldly take possession of all remaining human capital -- the plebs, you and me and the squirreled-away scrapings in our savings and 401Ks.

• Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell; the Eric Schmidt How-to Manual
  
• Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley; the Klaus Schwab How-to Manual.
  
• The UN Makes It Official: Global Warming Hysteria Is All About Redistributing Wealth (FNC, March 27, 2009): A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes -- all under the supervision of the world body. (Also, see U.N. Official Reveals below under Money rubric.)
  
• Greenpeace: Yeah, We Misled, But We Needed The Emotionalism! (Hot Air, August 20, 2009): Although [Greenpeace leader Gerd Leipold] admitted Greenpeace had released inaccurate but alarming information, Leipold defended the organization’s practice of “emotionalizing issues” in order to bring the public around to its way of thinking and alter public opinion. ... Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate. (Also, see Emotionalized Science below under Science rubric.)
  
• NYC Letter: America's Ruling Class (E-Nough!, August 15, 2010): Although voted in by the electorate, representative government now represents itself. Whereas the electorate's interests are in creating prosperity, the government's interests lie in exploiting prosperity. The bigger, the more daring the exploitation, the more power needed. ... The exercise of power is checked at the limit of the law. [Pause.] But the clever ruling class writes sprawling, convoluted, contradictory defective laws that are passed to be "fixed" (or here) or, more bizarrely, they might vote the "fixes" and the defects together. These humongous laws are almost always tested in the courts, which effectively repeal or "fix" law from the bench.
  
• Klaus Schwab Says – You Will Own Nothing In 10 Years (Armstrong Economics, October 26, 2020)
  
• The Great Reset: “You Will Own Nothing, And You Will Be Happy”? (Russell Brand, January 29,2021): Markham White is one of the people that brought to our attention the phrase you will own nothing and you will be happy: "My question is if I don't own anything then who does? Who controls the resources? Well it seems like the most obvious answer is the very people who practically own everything now."
  
• Great Reset: Leaders Colluding To Make Us Powerless (Russell Brand, March 28, 2021): Eric Schmidt, "Let's posit that the highly educated, the people who are driving [the technology state] will be fine."
  

Money. The root of all rot.

• U.N. Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare (IBD, February 10, 2015): The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man's stewardship of the environment. But we know that's not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this. At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," she said.
  
• U.S. Billionaire Wealth Rises 40%, Up $1.1 Trillion, Since March 2020 (ZeroHedge, January 28, 2021): Institute for Policy Studies and Americans For Tax Fairness: "Not much has changed for America’s billionaires in the midst of the crisis—except the further swelling of their bank balances. "The combined fortune of the nation’s 660 billionaires as of Monday, January 18, 2021 was $4.1 trillion, up 38.6% from their collective net worth of just under $3 trillion on March 18, 2020, the rough start of the pandemic. At $4.1 trillion, the total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires is two-thirds higher than the $2.4 trillion in total wealth held by the bottom half of the population, 165 million Americans."
  
• Here Is The Hidden $150 Trillion Agenda Behind The "Crusade" Against Climate Change (ZeroHedge, October 14, 2021): Responding rhetorically to the key question, "how much will it cost?", BofA cuts to the chase and writes $150 trillion over 30 years — some $5 trillion in annual investments — amounting to twice current global GDP!
  

Science & Education. Bad education abets bad science. Bad science abounds.

• Military-Industrial Complex Speech (January 17, 1961) by Dwight D. Eisenhower: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
  Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades. In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government. Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. ... The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite."
  
• Global Warming Bombshell (MIT Review, October 15, 2004): "But now a shock: Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records. But it wasn't so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.
  Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!"
• NYC Letter: Hot/Cold, Part VI -- Emotionalized Science (E-Nough!, June 12, 2011): The science is emotionalized. But in a good cause, so that makes the emotionalized science sound. In fact, it is so sound that it is settled. That strong opinion makes for strong science is a time honored method predating the Novum Organum. ... There may be one or two more of these outlier "empirical" scientists, but "emotionalized" science still carries the day. [Pause.] The facts have yet to arrive, but soon. "Emotionalized" science has predicted the facts, which in bought science circles is like a guarantee.
  
• Scammers Impersonate Guest Editors To Get Sham Papers Published (Nature, November 8, 2021): "Hundreds of articles published in peer-reviewed journals are being retracted after scammers exploited the processes for publishing special issues to get poor-quality papers — sometimes consisting of complete gibberish — into established journals. In some cases, fraudsters posed as scientists and offered to guest-edit issues that they then filled with sham papers."
  

Information, Misinformation, Disinformation & No Information. The real made unreal.

• The Propaganda Multiplier (Swiss Policy Research): "It is one of the most important aspects of our media system, and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris."
  
• YouTube Deleted 2.5 Million ‘Dislikes’ From Biden White House Videos, Data Indicates (The Epoch Times, April 2, 2021) For a guy who purportedly received 81M votes, Biden Admin videos lack meaningful viewership. Biden videos are wildly, disproportionately ratioed. Try as they might, Big Blue Tech and Big Blue Media cannot fabricate post-election Biden popularity when it's tested in the market.
  
• The Dead Internet Theory suggests the human Internet died in 2016 or early 2017; it is now empty; much of dead-Net content is created by AI with the prime directive to convert Net-users into Net-consumers; dead-Net content is propagated by bots and abetted by "influencers" bankrolled by various corporations, further manipulated by dark government. It is intriguing because (a) it is correlative to much of what one finds and experiences on today's Internet, but (b) its assertions seem out-sized and preposterous. It is at (b) our incredulity kicks in and protects the dead-Net from serious scrutiny. Yet.
  Here are two overview videos: (1) The Dead Internet Theory (All Time, September 13, 2021), lays out basic argument (not quite as strongly argued as it could be); (2) The Dead Internet Theory 2 (All Time, September 28, 2021), a follow-on with a hard look at tech leviathan Google.
  
• Dying On The Internet (The Cinema Cartography, October 26, 2021) This is the sad goodbye-and-get-out of The Cinema Cartography. It is comprised of three video essays: (1) Death, is the voice looking to be, wanting to be heard; it lays out the stark case of Internet persona management, the graveyard of ideas; (2) Rigor Mortis, is a parody of an Alexa-like AI struggling mightily to find your meme breach-point; (3) Decay, this is Mr. & Mrs. Bond's trailing off, a literal walk-away from complicity with the deadening Internet and back into the natural world.
  

The great irony of our time, is that knowing what we know about Big Blue Tech, we act as if we do not really believe what we know. QED: those of you reading this who are still on FB or Twitter. 

Culture & Behavior. The world gone mad.

I believe we are in the midst of a mass psychosis. The literature on mass psychogenic illness often muddles mass psychosis with mass hysteria (as below). Hysteria has fallen on hard times. In 1980 it was removed from the DSM and parceled out to a wide variety of contemporary disorders. Today it only survives in medical literature as mass hysteria, which "is distinct from other types of collective delusions by involving physical symptoms... [O]utbreaks often include: symptoms that have no plausible organic basis; symptoms that are transient and benign; symptoms with rapid onset and recovery; occurrence in a segregated group." 

That is not what is happening today.

Consider this, the 'good German' did not seek out bad things. He did not necessarily condone bad things. He simply accepted at arm's length the Third Reich for what it was, did what was required, and got on with his life. All this worked perfectly well for him till Hitler began losing the war and the protections of the shared psychosis that was the National Socialist state evaporated. After the war 'good Germans' were de-Nazified, that is, their delusional ideology was treated, NOT some transient organic symptomology. Today's 'good global citizen' is being eased into a NWO no less immoral and dangerous than the Third Reich. Medical apartheid, state monopoly on truth, door-to-door compliance checks, federalized snitching, psychiatric detainment, and more — what is not already firmly in place is on the way.

• The Rape of the Mind (1961) by Joost Meerloo, MD (Hat tip DH): “[T]he totalitarian systems of the 20th century represent a kind of collective psychosis. Whether gradually or suddenly, reason and common human decency are no longer possible in such a system: there is only a pervasive atmosphere of terror, and a projection of 'the enemy', imagined to be 'in our midst'. Thus society turns on itself, urged on by the ruling authorities.”
  
• COVID-19 And The Political Economy Of Mass Hysteria (International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, February 3, 2021): This is the key paper; it's not too long with an abundance of insights, though the academese can be stilted. Here are a few illustrative takeaways: (1) [T]he only task of a minimal state is to protect private property rights. It is not the task of the minimal state to protect its citizens against all risks of life, such as getting a cold or the seasonal flu. ... Indeed, the state´s attempt to reduce infection rates in the form of mandatory face masks, the shutdown of businesses or shelter in place orders does violate the private property rights that the minimal state is supposed to defend and may produce negative externalities in form of depressions, alcoholism or suicides.; (2) [E]mpirical research found that in countries with higher welfare spending, people are less religious... Religious beliefs, however, have been shown to increase psychological wellbeing. Without a spiritual framework provided by religion and belief in an afterlife, there is a tendency for fear of death to increase and for the population to become more responsive to psychological problems and mass hysteria.; (3) [T]he state may actively want to instill fear in the population, thereby contributing to the making of mass hysteria. Illustrating this point is the leakage of an internal paper of the German Department of the Interior during the first weeks of the COVID-19 crisis. In the paper, the state experts recommended that the government should instill fear in the German population.
  
• The World Is Suffering From Mass Delusional Psychosis (Lew Rockwell, February 19, 2021): Mark McDonald, MD “There was never a medical crisis. There were always enough resources to deal with the people who were sick … Many resources were in fact turned away … The question then, for me, became, ‘What’s the real crisis? What are people really suffering from?’ It became clear to me, very quickly, within the first two or three weeks in March [2020], that it was fear. ... They believe that they are going to die — no matter what age, no matter what state of health they’re in — if they don’t leave their house with a mask and gloves on every day and run from [other] human beings. That’s delusional psychosis. It’s false, it’s wrong, it’s not backed up by evidence. And many, many Americans are living that and believing that.”
  
• ‘The West Is Firmly In The Grip, Not Of A Virus, But Of Delusional Madness’ (Neil Oliver, August 28, 2021)

There. My 2¢. Your turn. Feed the kitty.

A few days later, NP reader Damian Bennett had this to add:

I have read that the woke represent about 6% (!?) of Americans. How to account for their outsized influence? The woke have captured whole sectors vital to public discourse: legacy media, tech social media, infotainment, Hollywood, C-suites, academia, government bureaucracies, and government executives and officials. The woke own the Overton window and command the tools to shape topical proposition and argument. What's more, and this is critical, is stoked wokèdness to bring about outcomes necessary for ushering in the NWO. (This is not to suggest there is an alliance between wokèdness and the NWO. Once established the NWO will get busy purging the woke on the pretext of the very outcomes wokèdness wrought -- much as Lenin once in power purged the Revolution, beginning at the margins.) 

…/… 

 

Wokèdness is an ideology that is self-defined by personal fragility. Its acolytes presume privilege over you and demand elevation above you. They are frail and swooning, wounded by everything, afraid of everything, afraid of you. Cancel yourself!

Outside the protected battlespaces of Twitter and FB the woke are base cowards. This purported 6% will not fill out the barricades nor prevail when conflict moves into the real world. And that, ladies and gentlemen and indeterminate pronouns, is where we are headed.

…/…

Stay healthy. Stay Safe. Stay Sane.

The fact that thousands of healthcare professionals have misgivings about the vaccine should be enough to spark a real conversation

I think we all know that the people who have made things this way are hoping we’re still stuck on this for years 

writes Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media regarding the global (and manufactured) vaccine insanity.

We’ve got a bunch of godless heathen leftists who are drunk on false virtue and using it to make the government creep ever more into our lives. They’re not going to give that up easily.

The real-world consequences of Vax Mandate Mania are showing up more and more lately, usually in the form of people losing jobs. The heavy hand of the government vax pimps isn’t helping to win the hearts and minds of those who are opposed to getting vaccinated. They’re losing their jobs rather than roll the dice on a medical decision that doesn’t make them feel comfortable.

 … The vax Nazis love to frame [any] principled opposition as nothing more than a knee-jerk political stance by a bunch of right-wing nutjobs. Everyone I know who isn’t vaccinated has thought very carefully about it and all have sound reasons for opting out. In fact, many of them were planning on eventually get vaccinated but have been put off by the over-the-top rudeness of the vax pimps.

People don’t leave careers just because they’re in the mood to make a political statement. The fact that so many healthcare professionals have misgivings about the vaccine should be enough to spark a real conversation.

The lefty vax freaks are having too much fun being jerks about it though. They are miserable people who only find joy in spreading their emotional inadequacy and misery to others. It’s safe to say that they’re thrilled that people are losing their jobs over this.

Regarding the (entirely reasonable) statement about the "fact that so many healthcare professionals [having] misgivings about the vaccine should be enough to spark a real conversation", we have another Babylon Bee prediction come true: CDC Reminds People To Listen To All Medical Professionals Except For The Tens Of Thousands Who Refused The Vaccine.

Speaking of which: 

Terrifying New Halloween Mask Depicts A Human Face Not Wearing A Mask https://t.co/wCRxY54BBj

— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) October 11, 2021

Related: • Biden Magic: Why in God's Holy Name would anyone trust or comply with the Biden régime's mandated vax?
• Given that natural immunity has been found to be up to 13 times better than vaccine immunity, it could be argued that the most selfless thing for a person to do is to contract the virus naturally and recover
• Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus
• And here are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know
• Is the Yellow Star Really an Inappropriate Reference for the Vaccine Passport?
And from the March 2020 and April 2020 archives:
• Is There 100% Irrefutable Proof that the Covid19 Pandemic Is Overstated?
• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

 

Biden Magic: Why in God's Holy Name would anyone trust or comply with the Biden régime's mandated vax?

In view of a post noting that not a single newspaper seems to have made a detailed comparison between the pandemics of 2002 and 2009 on the one hand and the 2020 outbreak on the other, one American citizen has decided to pick up that very challenge, and who is it but Damien Bennett? (All brackets in the piece below are by the author.) As it turns out, says our international correspondent, …

It is not so hard to piece together the comparison …

• The 2002–2004 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), infected over 8,000 people from 29 different countries and territories, and resulted in at least 774 deaths worldwide.
  
• The 2009–2010 pandemic of swine influenza, caused by H1N1 influenza virus and declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) from June 2009 to August 2010, is the most recent flu pandemic involving the virus ... The number of lab-confirmed deaths reported to the WHO is 18,449, though the 2009 H1N1 flu pandemic is estimated to have actually caused about 284,000 (range from 150,000 to 575,000) deaths [worldwide]. A follow-up study done in September 2010 showed that the risk of serious illness resulting from the 2009 H1N1 flu was no higher than that of the yearly seasonal flu.
  
• The COVID-19 pandemic...is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). ... Official deaths from COVID-19 generally refer to people who died after testing positive according to protocols. These counts may ignore deaths of people who die without having been tested. Conversely, deaths of people who had underlying conditions may lead to over-counting. As of 8 October 2021, more than 4.83M [upward guess 5.9M] deaths have been attributed to COVID-19. The U.S. death count to date is 710,178, so prorated over the 2-year pandemic span ~355,089/deaths per yr.
• For comparison, "CDC estimates that seasonal flu has resulted in 9 million – 41 million illnesses, 140,000 – 710,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 – 52,000 deaths annually  between 2010 and 2020."

SO -- comparably 2002 SARS is insignificant; 2009 H1N1 is commensurate with seasonal flu. U.S. WuFlu appears 6X more lethal than high-end seasonal flu lethality. (Wait! Not so in Canada!). However if you have followed the CDC WuFlu bulletins, and I'm sure you have, analyses and modelings have been a royal botch and the numbers garbage. Short story, if your comparative article were ever found or written how persuadable could it be given the crap data must originate with the clueless CDC?

Let me make a case for why the Biden regime can no longer persuade.

We have been repeatedly knowingly egregiously lied to by this regime, by its CDC, by WHO, by big pharma. We have had big media and big tech suppress, distort, and deny relevant and vital information. We have had know-nothings, who clearly do not understand the manufacture and nature of these vaccines, pushed into positions of furtherance and censure and punition. The vax-hesitant or no-vaxxers are canceled in the public square, are maligned, threatened, harassed, assaulted, wished for dead or to suffer the cruelest deprivations and losses. Eminent doctors, epidemiologists, virologists, anyone with the scientific chops whose informed opinion urges caution or questions the safety or efficacy of the regime vaccines -- all are excluded from the public square, many being canceled, investigated, suspended, or fired. 

Faced with vax mandates, no-vax healthcare workers are resigning or being fired during what the vax pimps want you to believe is a national public health emergency. Wait! These aren't ignorant MAGA red cap clingers? Why are medical professionals vax-hesitant or no-vax? Well, shut up, the vax pimps explain. 

Biden: "When you see headlines and reports of mass firings, and hundreds of people losing their jobs, look at the bigger story...United went from 59% of their employees [vaccinated] to 99%..."

Yes, well, fire the 41% of your workforce who won't take the jab and -- Voilà! -- the remaining workforce is almost wholly jabbed (99% -- who are the 1% hold-outs?)! It's more Biden magic, like $3.5T in spending that costs zero dollars. Bigger story here than the consequences, folks. [Hard sigh.] He really is this stupid.

Biden: "We're making sure [i.e., mandating] healthcare workers are vaccinated because if you seek care at a healthcare facility, you should have the certainty that the people providing that care are protected from COVID and cannot spread it to you."

But of course there is no such certainty. You can be fully vaxxed and become reinfected and be reinfected and asymptomatic. You can be fully vaxxed and contract a variant and be asymptomatic. None of the WuFlu vaccines of a certainty prevent you from contracting or spreading the virus or a variant. Why doesn't Biden know such relevant uncontroverted baseline information?* What the vaccines can do is "significantly reduce the risk of severe illness and death."

* Any answer to any question regarding Biden's comprehension or competence or any necessary aptitude, begins: First off, Joe Biden is an idiot...

Just remember, once you are fully vaxxed, there is an endless Biden booster regimen in the works.

Alright. [Long deep breath.] Given all the above -- most particularly the corrupt incompetent mendacious Biden regime all in a huff and losing patience with bratty no-vax me -- why in God's Holy Name would I -- would anyone -- trust or comply with their mandated vax? Personally I am beyond any conciliation with the Biden regime. They are liars, and sloppy lazy liars at that. They don't comprehend baseline information. They are unaccountable for anything, not Afghanistan, not inflation, not the border, nothing. Lastly, Joe Biden is an idiot.

Related: Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus
• And here are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know
• Is the Yellow Star Really an Inappropriate Reference for the Vaccine Passport?
And from the March 2020 and April 2020 archives:
• Is There 100% Irrefutable Proof that the Covid19 Pandemic Is Overstated?
• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

Given that natural immunity has been found to be up to 13 times better than vaccine immunity, it could be argued that the most selfless thing for a person to do is to contract the virus naturally and recover

The arguments given by those supporting vaccine passports sound impressive, 

agrees Kurt Mahlburg "trapped [down] in Ozcatraz" (thanks, mate, to Mark Tapscott), 

but do they really hold water?

As James Morrow asks in bewilderment, Do Australia’s leaders really know what they’re doing?, and as the rest of us wonder how we could ever have believed that the spirit of the fellow (?) frontier nation was embodied by one Crocodile Dundee, the author of Cross and Culture responds on his blog (as at the Daily Declaration) to a dozen of the most common counter-arguments to his (to Kurt's) 5 Reasons Why Vaccine Passports are an Ethical Disaster.

Related: Here Is the Key Question Regarding the Coronavirus
• And here are the 7 Basic Points about Covid-19 that You Need to Know
• Is the Yellow Star Really an Inappropriate Reference for the Vaccine Passport?
And from the March 2020 and April 2020 archives:
• Is There 100% Irrefutable Proof that the Covid19 Pandemic Is Overstated?
• Anti-Americanism in the Age of the Coronavirus, the NBA, and 1619

Kurt Mahlburg:

1. “But we already need vaccine passports to travel to some countries.”

It is true that to visit some countries, you are required to present proof that you are immunised against diseases like smallpox, yellow fever or cholera.

But visiting the far-flung jungles of Africa or South America is worlds apart from visiting your local cafe, museum, church, workplace, or a nearby Australian state or territory. This is what the current vaccine passport debate is about.

These are apples-and-oranges comparisons. One is about the right of sovereign nations to determine who enters their borders and under what circumstances. The other is about freedoms that every Australian was born with, such as freedom of movement, association and assembly.

Advocates of vaccine passports are yet to explain why Australians should have these inalienable birthrights held hostage until they give up their medical autonomy.

2. “But flu vaccination is already mandated for entry into nursing homes.”

In some parts of Australia, people wanting to visit a loved one in a nursing home must show proof of an influenza vaccination before entry. Given that the primary purpose of a nursing home is to house and care for the elderly—who are on average much more vulnerable to influenza—there are obvious merits to such policies.

The same is true for ‘no jab, no play’ rules in childcare facilities. You don’t have to agree with these policies (I don’t) to see that the logic is to protect young children who are particularly susceptible to childhood diseases.

But to use this as the rationale for Covid-19 vaccine passports at all venues in the nation—which provide goods and services to people of all ages—is an extraordinary stretch. As such, an extraordinary amount of evidence must be provided by those arguing for it.

We know that while Covid-19 is a deadly disease for some, it is nowhere near as fatal to the general population as influenza is to the elderly. In fact, for the vast majority of people, both the original virus and its variants are no more (or less) dangerous than the flu.

Moreover, we know that while the Covid-19 vaccines reduce hospitalisations and deaths, they do not prevent transmission of the virus.

These facts do not constitute extraordinary evidence for forcing people to take a Covid-19 vaccine.

3. “But privately-owned venues are already allowed to ban smokers.”

Yes, privately-owned venues are allowed to ban smokers, but the minute a smoker removes the cigarette from their mouth, they can enter the venue. A patron visiting a particular establishment without shoes, a collared shirt or ID can likewise tidy themselves and freely enter.

Taking a vaccine is different. Vaccination is a medical treatment that, like all other medical treatments in Australia, is governed by the principle of informed consent.

Even if we entertain the comparison between taking a vaccine and disposing of a cigarette, privately-owned venues are still regulated by the government. A pub or restaurant cannot, for example, decide to exclude people who have HIV/AIDS. In NSW, ‘infectious diseases discrimination’ is against the law: this includes treating someone unequally on the assumption that they have or may acquire an infectious disease.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has so far indicated that the Federal Government won’t force venues to require proof of Covid-19 vaccination for entry: a welcome announcement. What is in question is whether the government should allow this kind of discrimination at all.

A strong case can be made that they should not. Renowned legal scholar Professor Augusto Zimmermann argues that vaccine passports “unconstitutionally impinge on the democratic principle of equality before the law and the free movement of Australian citizens within their own country.”

Whether we turn to Australia’s Constitution and subsequent case law, our nation’s anti-discrimination legislation, or even the ‘tolerance’ and ‘inclusion’ rhetoric that has dominated our airwaves for the last five years—Australian governments should be acting to prevent this kind of medical discrimination.

4. “But the government already mandates other safety measures.”

It has also been argued that since the government has the right to make us wear seatbelts or stop at traffic lights, they should also have the right to make us get a vaccine.

Once again, these situations are chalk and cheese. One of them involves obeying momentary directives; the other requires handing over one’s medical autonomy to the State without any assurance that the State will hand it back again.

Other nations such as Israel are already mandating a third booster shot and planning a fourth. These passports come with no sunset clause. It takes immense—one might argue naive—trust in government to assume that this infrastructure won’t be broadened by present and future governments.

5. “But other countries are already using vaccine passports.”

Other nations are indeed already using vaccine passports. But this has been met with considerable unrest, with mass protests breaking out in cities across Europe—even if corporate media outlets are being deliberately silent about these historical events.

Representative democracy was established so that a nation’s laws would reflect the will of its people. But when political leaders make unilateral decisions under emergency health orders, they effectively bypass the people’s will. Mass protests are an indication that a leader’s decisions may not accurately reflect the will of those who elected them.

The use of vaccine passports elsewhere does not mean Australia will inevitably follow suit. By speaking up on this issue, Australians can and should seek to influence the decision-making of their leaders.

It is also a flawed argument to suggest that Australia should mandate vaccines because other countries are doing so. Other nations allow grown men to marry child brides. Should we do the same? A nation’s laws should not be shaped by global groupthink but by the will of its citizens—ideally guided by God’s moral law.

6. “But vaccine passports will bring us greater freedom.”

The idea that vaccine passports will somehow grant us ‘greater freedom’ is a semantic trick that some political leaders have used and that many have believed and repeated.

It is a semantic trick because what is meant is not greater freedom but greater safety. Driven by exaggerated panic, people hope that vaccine mandates will deliver them freedom from fear or freedom from death. But to be clear, these are functional synonyms for safety.

The civic freedoms endangered by vaccine passports—such as freedom of movement and the right to bodily integrity—have precise definitions. More safety is always possible when we give up civil liberties. After all, one of the safest places in the world is solitary confinement; but that doesn’t make solitary confinement an optimal life choice.

In every case, we must ask whether the freedoms we give up—freedoms that our ancestors bled and died on foreign soil to protect—are worth the safety promised to us in that exchange. And we can hardly have a rational debate about such weighty matters when words are used to conceal rather than reveal someone’s true intent.

7. “But vaccine passports are just temporary.”

I have been asked why I assume vaccine passports will be permanent. But I believe this is the wrong question. A better question would be, why do you assume vaccine passports will be temporary?

At the beginning of 2020, if I had told you that the Australian government would force people to stay inside their homes for months at a time and only be allowed to exercise for an hour a day, would you have believed me?

What if I told you there would be mass unrest with police firing rubber bullets at unarmed protesters? What about state borders being shut at the drop of a hat? Military patrolling the city streets? Governments requiring you to tell them your every move, including—if you are single—which other individual you were liaising with?

Of course, every one of these measures has been justified as being “for the greater good”. But that’s precisely the point. In the name of public health and safety, the government’s role in our lives has only become more intrusive and onerous since the beginning of the pandemic.

It is not ‘acting out of fear’ to warn that the vaccine passports being rolled out now may end up becoming a permanent fixture of daily life. On the contrary, this is an entirely sober and realistic prediction—though one I would be delighted to be wrong about.

For context, in August, the World Health Organisation released an 80-page document providing ‘implementation guidance’ for vaccine passports. They aimed to equip all WHO member states to develop passports that are ‘interoperable’—that is, passports that can be used within and between all of the world’s nations.

Indeed, long before the Covid-19 pandemic began, the European Commission had laid out a roadmap to implement a standard vaccination passport for EU citizens.

There is a global mood for these passports. Governments are spending billions of dollars on them. Again, what would lead us to assume they are temporary?

8. “But no one is suggesting churches should ban the unvaccinated.”

Once again, in response to the question “Who is seriously considering barring unvaccinated people from church?” one could reply, “Who was seriously considering locking Australians inside their homes before 2020 began?”

But in answer to the question, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Israel have all variously barred unvaccinated people from worship services.

Moreover, a recent Christianity Today article suggested that although limiting gatherings to only vaccinated congregants would be resisted by many churches, “the idea isn’t new [and] the use of health passes could become commonplace in the coming months.”

In an Australian context, the vocal and widespread opposition to The Ezekiel Declaration suggests that many Australian Christians are willing to exclude unvaccinated people from church services in the name of health and safety.

Before I could finish writing this article, the New South Wales government announced a soon-to-be-confirmed rule that places of worship must use vaccine passports to exclude the unvaccinated.

This eleventh-hour development is further evidence—if we needed it—that those still instinctively hoping for government leniency are letting themselves be led up the garden path.

9. “But the vaccines are safe.”

The vaccines have proven safe for the majority of those who have taken them. But this does not mean they should be mandated. Many things are healthy for us—whether vitamins, exercise or vegetables—that governments have no business forcing upon us.

It is important to note, however, that the vaccines have not been safe for everyone. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) reports that nine Australians have lost their lives as a direct result of taking a Covid-19 vaccine—one from Pfizer and eight from AstraZeneca.

(The TGA has received 490 further reports of death following a Covid-19 vaccination, but in these cases, a causal link to the vaccine was not explicitly confirmed).

Some 55,000 adverse events have been reported to the TGA in connection with the Covid-19 vaccines. Most of these were minor and short-lived, but some have been serious. Channel 7 reporter Denham Hitchcock, for example, has suffered debilitating complications since taking the jab.

In the United States, almost 14,000 deaths have been reported following a Covid-19 vaccination through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). This number represents 60 per cent of all vaccine deaths that have ever been reported to VAERS since it was set up in 1990.

Not all VAERS data is bias-free or accurate since reports are made to it voluntarily. But it is also true that reporting a death is a time-consuming task that comes with no personal benefit—and possible scrutiny—for any medical professional who submits it. So 14,000 is likely to be a floor rather than a ceiling for Covid-19 vaccine deaths in America.

In addition to this, some 650,000 adverse events have been reported to VAERS following a Covid-19 vaccination. Most of these are minor, but thousands of miscarriages, heart attacks, and permanent disabilities are included in this number.

Similar data can be seen in the UK’s Yellow Card reporting system and Europe’s EudraVigilance database.

Given that lockdowns, travel bans, and mask mandates were so often justified on the basis that they might save “even one life”, it is ironic if people now justify these deaths and injuries as mere collateral damage in the vaccine rollout.

It is also callous to suggest that any talk of vaccine deaths or injuries will harm the vaccine rollout. These are real people who have died or suffered in life-altering ways. Their lives matter as much as those we are seeking to protect from Covid-19.

10. “But the risk of Covid-19 outweighs the risk of the vaccine.”

It is true that, on balance, the risk posed by the virus outweighs the risk of taking the vaccine. But this fact comes as cold comfort for the person who dies from a vaccine and for the loved ones they leave behind.

This point was well-argued in a recent Caldron Pool article.

Caldron Pool likewise pointed out that human beings are not robots: we approach risk in different ways. Some people are so risk-averse that they never travel by aeroplane; others live for the thrill of BASE jumping or motocross despite the significant dangers of these sports. We all agree that these are decisions people should be free to make themselves, not have imposed on them by others.

Additionally, if given a choice between being killed ‘artificially’ at the hands of another person or by an event of nature that may happen sometime in the vague, unknowable future, most people would choose the latter. This explains why many young, healthy people with robust immune systems prefer to take their chance with the virus rather than the vaccine. This choice should be left to them, not forced on them.

Covid-19 is a highly discriminatory disease that poses particular dangers to the elderly, the immunocompromised, and those with co-morbidities. For such people, taking the vaccine is a no-brainer. But this is an argument for vaccines, not compulsory vaccines.

Let the healthy 18-year-old man who has just a 0.003 per cent chance of dying from Covid-19—but who could die of a vaccine complication—assess his risks each way, free of coercive mandates.

11. “But the unvaccinated could end up killing people.”

The Covid-19 vaccines have been shown to reduce hospitalisations and deaths significantly. But nations with high vaccination rates still see high rates of transmission and infection.

In other words, the benefit of the vaccine is almost entirely personal. It protects the person who takes it and may help slow transmission of the virus, but it cannot prevent them from passing it on to others.

Recent studies show that unlike immunity gained through natural infection, the vaccines do not give mucosal immunity; and that unvaccinated and fully vaccinated people carry similar viral loads.

So people should be encouraged to take the vaccine for their protection. But the idea that being vaccinated will render significant benefits to others is yet to be established. This is a wish; it is not a fact. Therefore, barring unvaccinated people from society is not only unethical; it is also ineffectual.

12. “But the healthcare system will be overwhelmed if you don’t get vaccinated.”

Now that most at-risk people have been vaccinated, the pressure on Australia’s healthcare system is significantly reduced, though modellers and governments remain vigilant.

For someone likely to need hospitalisation if they fall sick with Covid-19, it is a selfless act for them to be vaccinated. But this doesn’t mean it should be made mandatory for all people regardless of their risk profile.

13. “But Christians should give up their rights.”

Through his life and teachings, Jesus made it clear that we are to give up our rights for the benefit of others. Theoretically, this could be applied to freely deciding to get vaccinated. But it certainly doesn’t work for vaccine mandates: Jesus didn’t teach us to demand that others give up their rights for us—which is precisely what proponents of vaccine passports are arguing.

In fact, this teaching of Jesus would only apply to being vaccinated if, by taking the vaccine, I could prevent deaths in others. We are yet to see clear evidence of this in the case of the Covid-19 vaccines.

Furthermore, Jesus taught us to die to ourselves, but this command has limits. It is not ‘Christlike’ for someone to endure abuse, violence or sexual predation at the hands of their spouse. A similar example is Communism, where your rights and property are fully surrendered to the State—but this philosophy led to 150 million deaths. There must be a limiting principle to giving up our rights.

If someone has a very low risk of dying from Covid-19, and if the vaccine will not prevent them from spreading the virus to others, it may not make sense for them to take it. It certainly doesn’t make sense for us to force them to, nor would it be Christlike for us to demand this.

In fact, given that natural immunity has been found to be up to 13 times better than vaccine immunity, it could be argued that the most selfless thing for a young and healthy person to do is to contract the virus naturally and recover.

I often hear the criticism that Christians who disagree with vaccine mandates are selfish for demanding their rights. Actually, I have encountered very few Christians making this point.

Instead, I see Christians seeking to protect the rights and freedoms of those who, for a whole swathe of reasons, may not want or be able to take the vaccine. In making this stand, they are weathering a lot of opposition for the benefit of others; they are applying the teaching of Jesus to die to self.

Unfortunately, there are many today who are not conversant with history. We have had it so good for so long that we don’t understand the importance of civil liberties.

Freedoms are a safeguard, not a luxury. Human liberties protect the weak by restraining the powerful. It is the defence of freedom that has long prevented tyrants from terrorising ordinary people. The worst abuses of history were only made possible when fundamental freedoms were cast aside.

If you shrug off freedoms in the name of ‘loving your neighbour’, know that the neighbours you have chosen to love are the world’s powerful. And it is the powerless who will eventually pay the price. Instead, be like Jesus and sacrifice your popularity to defend the freedoms of others.

By all means, get vaccinated if you will. But don’t force others to: that is a demand we should not make.

Regarding what turns out to be the Crocodile Dundee myth, let James Morrow have the last word: 

Clive James once remarked that the problem with Australia wasn’t so much that it was a nation of convicts as a nation of jailers. It’s a good line, but jailers don’t win in the long run without a deferential population happy to give up their lives to authority.

Update (from the Babylon Bee): Australian Hospitals Over Capacity With People Beaten By Police For Not Wearing Masks

Australian hospitals are bursting at the seams, having reached their breaking point after being flooded with patients during the pandemic. The Australians streaming into the hospitals don't have COVID, though, but instead are just bloodied and bruised from cops beating them up for not wearing masks, going outside for fresh air, and talking to other people.