"We Have Legal Codes for a Reason"

Douglas Wilson Summarises the COVID-19 Debacle

Douglas Wilson

. . . But I will tell you what I think.

The devastation that has occurred because of this panic in high places is not likely to have cameras trained on most of it. If the cameras are running, and someone walks up behind someone else and clocks him with a baseball bat, the cause and effect is easy to see. The fellow who does that sort of thing is therefore charged with assault. And this is because everybody can see that an assault is in fact what happened. What happened is visible to all.

But when the damage is done to millions of people, and a large number of well-connected other people profit from it, then the case devolves into a political battle. Factions and parties develop, and all the usual political tools, manufactured in our national laboratories of obfuscation, are deployed. And so the chances are excellent that during the course of the debate, the people directly affected will fade into a gray statistical twilight.

Meanwhile, the damage is actually done, and for those willing to look straight at it, there is no denying it. The people on the margins are the ones who will be hit hardest, but because political careers will be dependent upon not ever recognizing the damage we have done, the chances are good that that we will be compliant, and will not recognize it.

Scientific consensus is oxymoronic. Faith in the scientific process is one thing. Faith in scientists is quite another. Faith in scientific spokesmen (e.g. Fauci or Birx) is actually faith in telegenic people with scientific credentials who have been selected for political reasons. And that is why we have been slathering the nation broadside with scientific solutions when there should have been a scientific debate.

But there are some signs of hope. Despite what I just wrote, there are signs that a debate might occur anyhow, however belated, and I am doing my best to see that it happens. This was as debacle for the ages. And this leads me back to the theme of this post.

One of the “tells” that indicates that something is seriously wrong is that the governor of a conservative state like Idaho can simply announce that he is doing something, cite the part of the Idaho Code that authorizes him to do it, but then, when we go and have a sober look at that portion of the Idaho Code we find something else entirely. But we have written constitutions for a reason. We have legal codes, written down in big, fat books, for a reason.

The code says you can quarantine the sick. What was done was a quarantine of the healthy. The code says that you can isolate the contagious. What was done was the isolation of everybody.

Following this logic, the right to keep and bear arms means that you don’t have the right to keep and bear arms. The right to free speech means that you had better shut up. The right to assemble means that you can look at flickering images on Zoom, with no telling who is vacuuming up that data.

The time to kick is now.