I stand by all of the thrust, and many of the particular points, of my recent post “Tyranny Unmasked.” But I wish to explain – and to pull back from – some of the language I used in the penultimate paragraph. That paragraph reads:
But for the few of us who want to live free, civilized lives – lives unobstructed by the awful officiousness of the healthocrats – I think I can speak: Leave. Us. Alone. For heaven’s sake, leave us alone. Please. Mind your own business. Cower in fear and live, if you wish, in your antiseptic and lonely closets. You’ll perhaps arrange for your hearts to keep beating for an extra year or two, but the ‘lives’ that you’ll lead will be pathetic, imbecilic, and unworthy of anyone worthy of life.
This paragraph was written in the heat of anger at the Orwellian tyranny that is going on now in Maryland. But anger is no excuse for being unclear or for using language excessively incendiary.
When I wrote this paragraph I had in mind people with (what I regard to be, in light of the facts of Covid-19) an irrationally elevated fear of the disease, and who actively support government-imposed lockdowns and other restrictions on ordinary social and economic activities. I did not have in mind people who only estimate the risks of Covid to be greater than my own estimate of the risks. My target was people who, because of their fear, unthinkingly endorse the lockdowns and other restrictions.
Further, I regret using the words “pathetic,” “imbecilic,” and “unworthy” to describe even the typical person who is a member of my target group. Such language is over-the-top and unnecessary. For this language, I apologize.
But I do so very much wish that more people would understand that unleashing arbitrary government power to combat Covid is to unleash a danger that very well might, especially over the long run, prove to be more debilitating and lethal than Covid-19 itself. It distresses me that so very many people discount the dangers of what is now tolerated in the name of fighting a physical pathogen.
