We Have to Have the Guts

 J. B. Shurk has an article today at the American Thinker entitled How to Tell What the Government Fears Most. Shurk makes a point that I have also made: that the thing we can do to keep our freedom in these times is to tell the loudly tell the truth as a counter to the lies you are being fed. The more of us that can work up the courage to do that revolutionary act, the less power the government will have agaist us.

If government can make you afraid of something — imaginary or not — may it then control your life completely in order to guarantee FDR's "freedom from fear"? Does depending on government to ensure "freedom from fear" not incentivize government to invent new fears that only additional government powers can vanquish? Does this not subsidize fear with taxpayer dollars and guarantee that government will always strive to make citizens afraid? Can it really be true that individual liberty should be "allowed" to exist only when there is nothing that can hurt us? Isn't that what a master might tell his slaves?

If truth exists independently from governmental decree, and science is a process in search of truth, then why are governments working with Google, Facebook, and Twitter to censor scientific debates? Is truth so fragile that it will not survive false attacks? Is science so dependent on "official edicts" that it must be regulated and practiced only by a small priestly caste? If scientific consensus depends on government creating a monopoly over information, does this mean that truth is whatever government deems it to be? Since government is incentivized to invest in fear, is it likely that government will ever declare a truth that isn't also scary?

If government power grows by monopolizing information and weaponizing fear, then isn't the greatest threat to government an independent citizen unafraid of thinking for himself? Is it not true, then, that every single person is capable of destroying the illusion of total government control? Is it not true that leaders can rise from anywhere — whether at local school board meetings, in football stadiums, or even from spontaneous testimonials during Red Lobster dinners? Is it difficult to imagine "freedom speakeasies" popping up wherever freedom is outlawed? Is it not true that there are more citizens than jail cells and that when enough people choose to disobey unjust laws, government must choose either to change the laws or lose its powers? Is it not true that every fight for freedom throughout history has started with a spark that catches fire? Is it not also true that sometimes the worst brushfires spread, and things get unbearably hot for a while, but then great growth rebounds after that?

OK, so I didn't say telling the truth would be easy. It requires a lot of reading and research, and using your ability to reason and your common sense. The answers are out there to be found, but it requires searching for them. But as Shurk suggests, if you can find what the social media are censoring, that is a great start toward the truth. And when you find the truth, you must not be disuaded. All attempts to take away your rights and freedoms are ultimately based on lies. The citizen who refuses to repeat the lies is what the government fears most. And keep in mind that unlike many people who have faced such times, we have the Second Amendment, which limits the oppression that can be imposed on us. We just have to have the guts.

At The Federalist, Joy Pullman writes that The Top Reason I Hate Masks Is They Force Me To Live by Lies. Again, the theme is that by acquiesing to the dictates of the regime is to place ourselves in chains. We do the work for them. In this case, by wearing masks even though we know they don't stop the virus, we make it appear to others that the majority of us do infact believe these things.

This is what mask mandates achieve — a false signal that dissenters don’t exist, that everyone buys into the indefinite suspension of our rights “because COVID,” no matter how much it harms people, nor how weak its alleged rationales. This was confirmed for me when my governor finally let his mask mandate lapse. Suddenly, after I had been for months nearly the only person I ever saw without a mask, now almost nobody wore them.

And it wasn’t because everyone was vaccinated, as government statistics show the majority are not. So it was clear that the vast majority of my fellow citizens were obeying the mandate simply because it was a mandate, not because they fully supported it. Yet their compliance communicated the falsehood that the COVID regime had mass support. And that is exactly the point.

Citizens’ assistance to a lying and oppressive regime, Havel says, changes those who corrupt themselves in this way: “they may learn to be comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it were something natural and inevitable and, ultimately, so they may — with no external urging — come to treat any non-involvement as an abnormality, as arrogance, as an attack on themselves, as a form of dropping out of society.”

In other words, falsifying reality brings about more of that falsified reality. It’s the same dynamic as gang initiations requiring initiates to commit crimes. Once people have compromised themselves, they are more likely to identify with their compromise, because it’s embarrassing to admit you were wrong. So instead, people double down. They heap onto their initial cowardice the additional cowardice of refusing to admit they could have been wrong.

Said differently, lying demoralizes people, quite literally, which is the ultimate goal of the regime. What government fears most is people with moral authority. We just have to have guts.