Search Query: covid

Search Results

You searched for "covid" and here's what we found ...

When Corporations Serve As a Front for Government Censors

by
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. We must, therefore, be on our guard against extremists who urge us to adopt police state measures. Such persons advocate breaking down the guarantees of the Bill of Rights in order to get at the communists. They forget that if the Bill of Rights were to be broken down, all groups, even the most conservative, would be in danger from the arbitrary power of government.”—Harry S. Truman, Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States (August 8, 1950) Nothing good can come from allowing the government to sidestep the Constitution. Unfortunately, the government has become an expert at disregarding constitutional roadblocks intended ...

Understanding Freedom and Faith in Freedom

by
There are two major obstacles to achieving a genuinely free society in our lifetime: one, a lack of understanding of the genuine principles of freedom, and two, a lack of faith in freedom. The first obstacle involves principally nonlibertarians. The second obstacle involves everyone, including libertarians. If someone were to conduct a survey among the American people today in which people were asked if they felt they lived in a free society, I would bet that the vast majority of Americans would respond yes. Sure, Americans complain about how the federal government operates, about the large amount of federal spending and debt, about regulatory mishaps, about the adverse results of various foreign interventions and wars, and about various other aspects of the welfare-warfare state system under which Americans live. But I believe that most Americans would willingly agree with singer Lee Greenwald’s refrain, “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free.” My favorite quote is by the ...

COVID-19 Tested Our Commitment to Freedom

by
“The remedy is worse than the disease.”—Francis Bacon The government never cedes power willingly. Neither should we. If the COVID-19 debacle taught us one thing it is that, as Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged, “Rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow.” Unfortunately, we still haven’t learned. We’re still allowing ourselves to be fully distracted by circus politics and a constant barrage of bad news screaming for attention. Three years after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave world governments (including our own) a convenient excuse for expanding their powers, abusing their authority, and further oppressing their constituents, there’s something being concocted in the dens of power. The danger of martial law persists. Any government so willing to weaponize one national crisis after another in order to expand its powers and justify all manner of government tyranny in the so-called name of national security will not hesitate to override the ...

Big Brother and the Rise of the Security Industrial Complex

by
“Big Brother is Watching You.”―George Orwell, 1984 2024 is the new 1984. Forty years past the time that George Orwell envisioned the stomping boot of Big Brother, the police state is about to pass off the baton to the surveillance state. Fueled by a melding of government and corporate power—the rise of the security industrial complex—this watershed moment sounds a death knell ...

Trampling on a Symbol of Liberty

by
Last August, 12-year-old Jaiden Rodriguez was kicked out of a public-school classroom in Colorado Springs after school officials decreed that the Gadsden flag patch on his backpack was “disruptive to the classroom environment.” Those Colorado officials didn’t know the meaning of “disruptive.” Thanks to savvy, thoughtful retorts by Jaiden’s mother in a video showdown at the school, the incident spurred ...