To ‘normalize’ vaccine passports, the idea is increasingly being discussed in the media as we trudge on through the umpteenth version of lockdowns.
On Saturday (13 March 2021) I got accosted by the police in Cap d’Ail (south of France) for the offense of taking my kids out in the sun without having a justificatif. I have long lost track of the ever changing rules and shifting logic, but I didn’t feel like arguing.
The police were just doing their jobs, enforcing shitty rules that harass and antagonize people. For example, I would have been allowed to be where I was if it were a working day, but since it was Saturday, it was verboten. The objective of such rules is nothing to do with public health; they are intended to exasperate us all to the point where we yield to the indignity of vaccine passports when they are rolled out, just so we can live our lives and be left in peace.
The small, complicated rules that create a flock of timid and industrious animals
Alexis de Tocqueville understood the nature of this dumb, slow march of bankers’ tyranny. In “Democracy in America” (1835) he predicted that the society would fall into a new kind of servitude which, “covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules,” which “does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”
De Tocqeville’s book was published mere two years after President Andrew Jackson ended the Second Bank of the United States, and the struggles between the bankers and the society was very pertinent to his observations.
The small complicated rules are a sinister trap and it is imperative that we not fall into it. Even if we are ready to yield on vaccines and vaccine passports to end our present predicament, our children and grandchildren will have to live with the consequences of our compromises. We therefore have no right to decline this struggle.
Bureaucracies metastasize
Vaccine passports will introduce a new bureaucracy that will issue the documents, set the rules and standards, and create the structures of enforcement. These structures will not fade with the corona virus. Bureaucracies are resilient and susceptible to mission creep. They continuously seek justifications for their own relevance. The more important their role, the bigger their budgets and the greater their powers.
At first, vaccine passports will certify your SARS-Cov2 vaccinations – two shots, perhaps three. Soon, they might certify your annual or semi-annual shots, chip implants and who knows what else. At first, the passports might be required to travel and access public venues, but soon they’ll be required to unlock your bank account, validate your driver’s license, keep employment and keep your water and electricity from being cut.
For all who think that the authorities wouldn’t get so tyrannical, please start paying attention and heed the lessons of history. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance, and it is well past time for us to be vigilant as unprecedented repression is being planned without any sensible justification. “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction,” warned Ronald Reagan: “It must be fought for, protected, and handed on [to our children] for them to do the same.”
We must not go along with the march of tyranny like dumb sheep. We must not doom our children to a totalitarian nightmare that could make the Bolshevik terror or Chinese Cultural Revolution seem mild by comparison. As they gain power, dictatorships turn increasingly malignant. As a witness to the rise of Bolshevism, Aleksandr Solzhenytsin wrote that, “Communist parties, upon attaining power have become completely merciless. But at the stage before they achieve power, it is necessary to use disguises.”
Today, the slithering tyranny has disguised its actions as a fight against a deadly virus. If the virus outlives its usefulness, there are other disguises: racism, domestic extremism, climate change… But we must quickly wise up, see these disguises for what they are and reject the sinister agenda. In yielding to the lies, allowing new structures of repression to metastasize, our cowardice will deprive younger generations of a future worth living. The struggle has now been imposed on us; our only choice is to muster our courage and prevail.
We all MUST say NO! Let them fly empty planes, play games in empty stadiums and give concerts to empty auditoriums. Each and every one of us must firmly state that we will not comply!
