Right now Russian ships are offloading gas in Boston harbor because we are not allowed to retrieve our own.
Personal liberty is no longer a right. It is a conditional privilege that can be recalled whenever current circumstances which are (unlike aerial bombardment by a military enemy) hazily defined, uncertain in their effect, and only barely understood, seem to indicate a possible need.---Daley
This would never occur among a people who took liberty seriously.
Kathleen Parker writes that “[t]he relative risk of widespread infection from travelers may be statistically insignificant, but why to take a chance?” --Parker
Wait. The possibility of a problem justifies what and how much response?
Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. Prohibition has not only failed in its promises but actually created additional serious and disturbing social problems throughout society. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished.--Mencken
Indeed, so much of what we became hysterical about—mask-wearing and vaccine hesitancy as applied to the low-risk—was a poor substitute for communicating about and acting on distinctions in risk. The worst part is we knew better on day one, but political imperative did not favor realistic communication about risk or prioritization.--Jenkins
“stronger Covid measures produce stronger economic outcomes.” --Klain.
Now here is an insight. The effect of regulations to kill economic creativity and development is good for economic creativity and development. Orwell lives.
Aside from its effects on health, education, and the economy, lockdown represents the greatest infringement on civil liberties in modern history. Here and elsewhere, the state used its monopoly on force to outlaw some of the most basic human interactions, such as having a meal with friends.--Carl
“They’re really criticizing science because I represent science.”--Fauci
You may all rise.
Hayek was trying to show his readers that planning, everyone’s favorite remedy for the ills of the world, might sound good in theory, but would not work out in practice (or, at least, not unless the western democracies were prepared to accept severe constraints on personal liberty of the sort on display in the systems against which they currently [in 1944] were fighting).--Caldwell
As chair of the South African Medical Association and a GP of 33 years’ standing, I have seen a lot over my medical career. But nothing has prepared me for the extraordinary global reaction that met my announcement this week that I had seen a young man in my surgery who had a case of Covid that turned out to be the Omicron variant. And let me be clear: nothing I have seen about this new variant warrants the extreme action the UK government has taken in response to it. No one here in South Africa is known to have been hospitalised with the Omicron variant, nor is anyone here believed to have fallen seriously ill with it.--Coetzee
The muscle memory we have acquired from repeated executive-imposed lockdowns is impossible to unlearn. The Government’s continued avoidance of parliamentary scrutiny — unless forced by backbench pressure — treats democracy as part-time, debate as futile, and opposition as something to be squashed. Let’s be honest, this is exactly how politicians intoxicated with power want it to be.--Carlo
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