28 Mar From COVID-19 – A New Birth of Freedom
Americans may not generally be aware that Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address was delivered less than five months after the horrendous battle at that site, and well before the outcome of the Civil War was certain. Yet he posited the profound hope that out of the carnage would come a ‘new birth of freedom’.
Let’s expect the same new birth of freedom as America emerges from all the dimensions of the COVID-19 ‘war’, even if we may still be a few ugly battles away from declaring it ‘won’.
We may be years or decades away from understanding exactly who and what caused, amplified and perpetuated the crisis of fear that enveloped the country—which objective observers would say (at least as of today) far exceeded the crisis of the actual disease and its diagnosed cases and outcomes. But the good news is: whatever the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic and panic, the result is the sense of a new birth of freedom stirring across America.
That’s because Americans are learning by actual experience what it is like to have the government at all levels become a dictator. Orders to stay at home for days and weeks at a time; to not meet with friends; to not participate in person at church services; to not gather in groups of more than 10 people—these are right out of any totalitarian’s dream playbook for controlling the people.
Deploying law enforcement to shut down transportation of ‘non-essential’ (as defined by government) merchandise; deploying the National Guard to enforce stay at home orders; ordering the closing of retail gun shops as ‘non-essential’; readying to shut off power and water to those who don’t comply with government orders; drone camera patrols to monitor compliance with shelter-in-place orders—Marxists everywhere are ecstatic at ‘what hath been wrought’, finally, on America.
But the spirit of America and Americans—as has been the case throughout her history—will not go quietly into that dark night of tyranny.
There’s been a healthy initial deference to and trust of public health officials, and an expectable trend of obedience to rules understood as imposed by decision makers doing the best they can with the information and doubts and fears they have. And no doubt the various quarantining tactics have had some ameliorative effect.
But as we warned awhile ago, the COVID-19 hysteria looked a lot like climate change hysteria on steroids. And lo and behold, up pops a ‘correction’ by the UK epidemiologist whose dire projections helped spark worldwide hysteria: …oops, he made a mistake, and his computer model spit out numbers that wildly overstated the risk. As in…the first projection of COVID-19 deaths in the UK was around 500,000; the ‘corrected’ projection is maybe up to 20,000.
Of course 20,000 deaths is not cause for celebration. But it’s also not cause for shutting down the UK and the rest of the world indefinitely, or maybe at all.
The UK epidemiologist has already tried to say he still means what he said, but health measures have made the difference. Whatever. The revised prediction is reason for Brits and Americans and all of mankind to think again about what propels hysterical fear and why the universal ruling class response to hysterical fear was a near-complete shutdown of individual freedom, as opposed to a vast range of alternative responses that start from trust in informed, free people to adapt, adjust and overcome any crisis.
President Trump seems to have the instinct to trust free Americans, even though the initial need to bow to the nation’s public health ‘experts’ was impossible to avoid, and once done, ultimately gave rise to the need for a rescue package of ‘funny number’ size. But Trump’s open acknowledgement that the cure can’t be allowed to be worse than the disease was a step in the right direction, and the get-back-to-work-by-Easter sentiment another.
Between now and full return to the booming economy of less than two months ago (really, less than two months ago), the Dem/MSM/leftist cabal will crank the shrieking up to 11 to claim in one way or the other that the worst is still to come, that Trump is lying about any good news, that Trump just wants to refill his hotels, that Trump doesn’t care about killing old people, etc., etc. But their shrieking jumped the shark a long time ago. Americans are increasingly looking at the Dem/MSM/leftist cabal as some kind of bizarre zoo exhibit—the animals are just so weird and unhinged and unrelatable you don’t know what to make of them. You’re just happy to see them at a distance in a cage where you only have to look at them if you want to.
So here’s to a new birth of freedom. It starts with deep, renewed appreciation for just how precious freedom is, and everyone who has sheltered-in-place for any length of time has that appreciation. It will expand with a rethinking of every decision taken at every level to restrict freedom, not with a focus on villainizing individual officials, but on substantive questions—what was each decision based on; where did the data come from; who decided who had the authority to interpret the data; if it proved to be mistaken and the response overwrought, then why was it mistaken and overwrought—that need to shape future responses with greater respect for and protection of freedom.
Another impetus for a new birth of freedom? New realism in the understanding of China under the Chinese Communist Party. They’ve provided a real-time demonstration to the world of the evils and dangers and abuses of communism. No truth, no transparency, no real sense of caring for humanity at large. Just lies, coverups, censorship, propaganda, and the harsh treatment of their own people, all to the end of maintaining absolute power. The romanticizing of China is over, for a long time, and the model of human freedom and self-government—America under the Constitution—shines again by comparison.
To herald a new birth of freedom is not to be naïve about dangers in the other direction. Leftists like George Soros will believe they have witnessed the perfect dress rehearsal for a complete takeover of America someday soon. All that’s needed is another leftist like Obama to be elected President, and the formula is there: create a pandemic, and the blueprint for lockdown, shutdown tyranny is in place. If a sympathetic Deep State bioweapon developer can just come up with something demonstrably more dangerous than COVID-19, America can be buried in relatively short order—i.e., the lockdowns and shutdowns can be ordered to remain in effect permanently in the name of public health, with occasional adjustments as approved by the government as necessary to keep the people fed and watered.
But we believe the leftists’ dream will not materialize, because the COVID-19-inspired new birth of freedom amounts to a strengthened immune system for America. That new birth of freedom will not permit frightened godless elites to exercise absolute power, but will, as Lincoln hoped, assure “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”.
Eric Georgatos and wife Debbie operate the America, Can We Talk? media platform, with 4 day a week video podcasting by Debbie, and weekly written commentary, all centered around the importance and value of preserving America under her founding ideals.