This sinister "Great Reset" stuff suggests we really might be approaching the "end of history" this time - not with the worldwide acceptance of classical liberalism, but with its decisive rejection in favor of "soft" and "limited" authoritarianism.
The new consensus spreading among Western political elites is that some issues must be taken off the table, placed beyond the reach of voters, "settled" - and thus enforced - by power that cannot be subordinated to democracy.
In other words, the list of things "free people" don't get to vote against or refuse to accept grows longer. The size and power of centralized government swells to a scale undreamed-of by the founders of a constitutional republic. Very little of it can be voted out of office.
This is all supposedly justified in the name of protecting what remains of democracy, and sanding the rough edges off of capitalism. The elites tell themselves they aren't really authoritarians - they're just helping "true" liberty flourish by limiting and nourishing it.
The people cannot be allowed to make choices that would interfere with the government-provided "rights" of others - in other words, the socialized goods and services everyone is "entitled" to. People must be made "free" from want, from insult, even from the need to work.
Whatever remains of free society after those authoritarian boundaries are drawn will become the new playground sandbox of liberty - smaller, but safer and more comfortable. All that is not steel will be velvet. All that is not demanded will be provided.
The elite will find just the right amount of authoritarian control to protect The People. You'll still be allowed to own some capital, provided you use it the "right" way. You can be ambitious, but not greedy. You can speak sort-of freely, but only about approved topics.
This is now the great illusion of the 21st Century, brought into focus by the coronavirus pandemic, which will be employed to kill classical liberalism by supposedly "proving" that the most important challenges can only be tackled with authoritarian control.
The delusion will be that authoritarianism can be tamed and harnessed to protect "free" societies. Authoritarianism will become the sleek scientific, industrial, and moral engine that pulls free people into the new century and beyond.
The political class will tell you this is a modest and necessary imposition on liberty. They're just putting a few dangerous things where your adorable childlike hands can't reach them. They're just requiring you to accept a few more points of "consensus."
The list of commands you cannot refuse will get just a LITTLE longer, as will the list of questions you are not allowed to ask, the words you're not allowed to use, the things you cannot buy or sell, the alternatives you are not permitted to seek.
Very Smart People of unimpeachable moral authority and unquestionable wisdom will draw some heavy lines. You will be permitted to color within them as you wish, using the acceptable colors provided to you. You won't be allowed to be dangerous or unpredictable any more.
In every respect, it's the end of classical liberalism - the end of universal freedoms and inalienable rights, of absolute limits on political control. Constitutional limits on what you can vote FOR will be replaced by lists of what you aren't allowed to vote AGAINST.
You may get to elect some of the deciders, but you won't be making the big decisions, and you will not be allowed to reject the "consensus." When capitalism is dominated by politics, risk is replaced by consensus, and reward by entitlement. It's "safer," and smaller. /end
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
It's entirely reasonable to say Trump's election lawyers need to produce hard evidence to back up their sweeping allegations, PDQ.
It's absurd to expect them to do it live on a talk show, as if they were carrying Marsellus Wallace's magic glowing briefcase from Pulp Fiction.
Host: You say thousands of votes were switched by corrupt computer software. You need to prove it.
Sidney Powell: Of course. I have the proof right here.
[opens briefcase, golden light spills out]
Host: Is that...?
Powell: Yes.
Host: Wow. OK, you win. I'm sold.
There is no way the "evidence" of the most serious claims is something that can be dangled in front of cameras. There is no way that attempting to do so would convince anyone, nor should it. The evidence will be extensively evaluated by experts and presented to judges.
None of the restrictions on speech and other freedoms imposed in the name of fighting the coronavirus will go away when the pandemic subsides. They will be repurposed to serve other items on the elite agenda, which we'll be told are every bit as serious as Covid-19 was.
Old and busted: "This left-wing cause is the moral equivalent of war!"
New hotness: "This left-wing cause is the moral equivalent of the coronavirus!"
"Just as Americans came together and made great sacrifices to defeat Covid-19, so we must now come together and save our beloved planet from the pandemic of climate change."
One of the worst contradictions of our debased republic is that we loudly insist voting is sacred, but we treat the actual ballots like toilet paper: Third World election systems, rampant fraud, clown-show counts and audits, election rules that keep getting looser.
You can't have it both ways. You can't insist voting is such a sacred privilege that it overrides every other consideration, while also treating the votes themselves as worthless junk - protected and counted far less assiduously than every state tracks its weekly lottery tickets.
If voting is a serious business, then it MUST be taken seriously, by both election officials and voters. That means firm rules and real effort for both casting AND counting the votes. Voting must be treated as a solemn duty, not an Internet poll to judge the cutest cat photo.
The Dem student loan forgiveness scheme would turn higher education into an even worse example of Chumponomics: a system that relies on chumps who pay full freight to subsidize those who don't.
Chumponomics is essentially stealth socialism, and it's usually a prelude to open socialism. Socialists deliberately create a crisis of unfairness, then insist their ideology is the only way to resolve it. They did it with health insurance, and they'll do it with student loans.
Open borders immigration policy is a great example of Chumponomics. The people who worked hard and followed all the rules to immigrate legally - investing a great deal of their time, which has a hefty monetary value - get screwed as illegals are waved into the country.
It might seem odd for a totalitarian socialist movement to run with slogans like "Abolish the Police," but it's perfectly consistent with their worldview. They despise the legitimate functions of limited government because they saddle the State with duties to sovereign citizens.
It's no coincidence that people who want to radically expand the size, power, and funding of our already titanic central government usually take a dim view of the things our constitutionally-limited federal system is SUPPOSED to be doing.
A government with sworn duties to all of its citizens is limited in power, especially if those duties take precedence over all the big plans socialists wish to impose through coercive force. Socialism requires unequal treatment by definition. It cannot function otherwise.
I remember warning at the outset that on a long enough timeline, every crisis becomes a religion. The Church of Covid is fully up and running, complete with heaven-and-hell mythology, devotional practices, and papal indulgences for elites and events with the correct politics.
Beneath all the politics and myth-making lies the simple idea that masks probably help a little, and if they help a little - plus giving people a little psychological comfort in a time of great crisis - they're worth using. If it ended there, we'd be having a rational discussion.
But masks were politicized in the worst possible way, and reason went out the window as a political-religious movement formed around the Wuhan coronavirus. It's easy to see why people fell for it. They desperately wanted to believe they could do SOMETHING to gain control.