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Thoughts on Silence in the Face of Tyranny
The following is a letter that I wrote to Don Boudreaux, in response to a recent article of his. If you do not read Mr. Boudreaux at CafeHayek, and if you do not read AIER daily, I strongly encourage you to do so. Both are indispensable sources of knowledge and insight, especially given our present intellectual climate.
Mr. Boudreaux,
Once again, Don, I thank you for being a reliable and consistent voice in support of liberty.
Once again, however, I must vehemently disagree with your position on the “passing of judgment” on other people’s silence. I am referring to your most recent article, “Why the Silence in the Face of Covid Tyranny,” which seeks to understand the lack of vocal outrage with respect to covid tyranny, and to your renewed commitment to understanding, rather than judgment when it comes to those who are silent.
While I am inclined to agree that the association with Trump is partly responsible, I think of that association as a sort of snowbank, through which the giant snowball, thundering downhill, passed in order to double in size. One of the best case-studies for conservatives/libertarians-turned-statists at the hands of covid, may be National Review. NR may also be one of the best examples in support of your theory, given their long-term stance on Trump.
It is also an example of the greater force at play, here, which is simple group-think. Something I noted early on about National Review was that it is based largely in New York and Washington DC. Covid hysteria really hit its stride when it began to appear to some people that New York City was destined to be the next Lombardo, Italy. Rural(ish) Washington State (where I live) was shut down in response to rising cases in New York … because once something begins to impact New York, it becomes personal for the media, and thus it takes on a wholly different tone. It seems that which started the snowball heading downhill. In essence, what happened was fear, which is driven by group-think, and which became responsible for an actual madness and loss of rational clear-thinking.
I’ve long said that Covid is like the test of war. I’m very much pro-gun; I carry a gun, I have a great many of them in my house, and I’m relatively proficient in their use (having grown up in Montana, this is not terribly unusual). But I will openly admit that I have zero idea how I would behave in an actual crisis. As an attorney who practices dependency law (and previously practiced criminal law), I’ve been exposed to a great many extremely tense situations, and I have been reassured by my ability to remain calm and attempt to de-escalate… but an active shooter? A person with a knife or a gun on me? I have no idea how I would react, and whether I would survive.
What I do know, however, is how my intellectual and personal commitment to liberty and conservatism would handle rising tyranny, because that actually has been tested over the past year. I know that I would stand up for what I believe is right, and that I would even do it in the courtroom, at the risk of alienating myself and potentially even at the risk of my job. I know that I would continue to look at the world around me in light of those things that I know to be true – in an actual crisis, I would maintain an understanding of the nature of markets, rather than having an emotional response to the lack of supply, or “price gouging.” Faced with a loss of income, I would maintain my understanding of the dangers of national debt and inflation, rather than asking the government for handouts. Faced with a virus that I do not understand (and this only describes a period of about a month between March and April of 2020), I would maintain a solid belief that there is no problem so big that the government cannot make worse. I would not view this as somehow the exception to the rule – the problem so important that suddenly our governments become competent, that individuals with power become focused solely on the interests and needs of others, and that incentives and temptations are somehow miraculously canceled by the sheer force of my own fear.
I have not lost any real friends, at least not that I know of. But I have lost an amazing amount of respect for the intellectual consistency of a great many people who I used to believe possessed some insight into matters of economics, politics, and law (to say nothing of medicine). I have lost an amazing amount of respect for my fellow citizens, and I have been hit upside the head with the reality that this country is maybe not what I thought it was. When the first European mask mandate was implemented, I said “that will never happen in the US. Tell us to wear masks, and we will tell you to go [REDACTED] yourself, and there will be absolutely no way to enforce it.” So when the mask mandate came, I picked up my pitchfork and began charging, yelling “FREEDOM” at the top of my lungs … only to look back and see nearly everyone, masked up… saying to me: “don’t be an [REDACTED].” And when I would point out the myriad evidence that these measures are arbitrary, senseless, and even harmful, I was met overwhelmingly with anger as opposed to argument.
I remain absolutely shocked by the same thing you complain of. I am not terribly surprised that CNN would put out some idiotic report, and that some of my neighbors who only watch CNN would believe it. I am, however, surprised by the lack of volume in opposition.
In college, I became fascinated with Russian history. Tyranny and fascism and communism fascinated me. I went to a tech school but crafted a “liberal studies” degree, largely out of Russian history and literature (among other things). More recently, I sat down to re-read “The Gulag Archipelago,” but I had to put it down in the middle of the third volume – right around March of last year, because it started to feel disturbingly too real and immediate. I felt like Solzhenitsyn himself – not in the sense that I was physically experiencing the same horrors, but in the sense of what I believe to be the overwhelming tone of all 3 of the Gulag volumes. Pardon the silly reference, but the attitude is that of the Will Farrell character in “Zoolander,” when he looks around at a crowd and says: “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!” In other words, it is the phenomenon of the emperor’s new clothes, with a disturbing twist. In that story, the child looks around at the crowd and is flabbergasted by the fact that the obvious is being denied by everyone. It is about the innocent honesty of a child who is not yet the victim of self-delusion, and the effects of peer pressure and individual insecurity on the adults around him. At the end, the awakened crowd laughs as the king completes his march in a vain attempt at maintaining his dignity. Our story is different. The crowd does not laugh, but responds with anger; not at the king, but at the person speaking truth, which points to something far more nefarious than
In Russia, it was far more nefarious. It was intentional. The power of the show trials, says Solzhenitsyn, lies in their absurdity. The trial is not intended to reveal facts. The only truth is the party, the only reality is the party. The purpose of the trial is to make this absolutely clear – it doesn’t matter what the facts are. It matters what the party says, and if the party says that you are guilty, then you are guilty.
This is a horror of tyranny that felt very real in the first part of the 20th century, and it is described in literature of the time – Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon,” or Kafka’s “The Trial,” or any number of others. It is why freedom of press and freedom of speech are so absolutely crucial for the maintenance of liberty – but like voting rights in Iran, these “freedoms” are only valuable if they are actually exercised.
What shocks me about covid is best embodied by what has become the single most tyrannical aspect of the past year: Masks. A dad at one of my sons’ baseball practices asked me the other day: “how many of these people do you think actually believe that masks work?” And I responded that it is actually pretty easy to see. Look around at all of these coaches and parents, I said. They are not wearing masks right now; but they all wore masks the first day of practice. They take them off when they see that other people are taking them off. They will wear them at games, because this is school-district property, and the school district requires that everyone wear masks, even outside, playing baseball.
The shocking thing about that is the fact that it is ridiculous. It is, in so many contexts, patently obvious. When you walk into a restaurant with a mask on, remove it to sit, then place it on again to go to the bathroom or leave … that is ridiculous. At my ski mountain, all year, the employees were directed to be extremely harsh about face coverings. “OVER THE NOSE!!” was shouted, and you risk having your pass yanked for failure to comply. At least when you’re standing in line… or when you go inside. It could be 40mph winds, outside, but you had better be wearing that thin piece of cloth all the way up over your nose. At 15 degrees outside, everyone looks like they are smoking cigarettes as their hot breath goes directly through the masks… but you had damned-well better wear it!
We are at that point with COVID in general, not simply with respect to the obvious nonsense involving masks. There is so much data out there, showing that lockdowns are worse than ineffective – that they do actual harm. There are scientific studies showing that masks either don’t work, or again, that they may even do harm, and there are no actual studies showing that they stop any sort of virus. There is real-world data showing the differences between states and countries with harsh restrictions and those with none. There is data revealing that testing is extremely flawed, that deaths are overcounted, that the fatality rate is far closer to the flu than to ebola (and for most age groups, lower than the flu). And for those who are still terrified, there are vaccines.
But the theater continues. In my courtroom – which is presently online via zoom – the judge last week stated that we would hopefully be allowed back in person this summer, with proper “safety protocols,” of course. Plexiglass barriers have been ordered, so that nobody will be sitting adjacent to anyone else, people will be forced to wear masks, etc… etc… and zoom will still be available for anyone who is not comfortable. There is talk about vaccine passports to “allow” basic freedoms that were never granted by our government in the first place. Masks and even covid tests required for travel. We still walk all over those stickers on the ground that say “stay safe, stay apart!” And there are signs everywhere that still say “mask up to open up!” I wondered aloud to my wife the other day whether all of these signs that say “maintain a safe distance of six feet” would now be replaced with ones that say “maintain a safe distance of three feet.” Nah… but the theater continues.
And when you are told by your good friend that it is unwise or unkind to call out fellow conservatives and libertarians for their failure to speak up … as he says; how can you know their reasons? How can you know what’s at stake for them? How can you know what pressure they might face? What if they simply disagree with your assessment of the facts?
Well, it gets back to Solzhenitsyn. He wandered around the Soviet Union eternally flabbergasted by the silence. He points out again and again and again that if “the party” had met with any resistance whatsoever, the whole thing would have fallen apart overnight. Solzhenitsyn also recognized that these people had their reasons. They wanted to protect their jobs and livelihoods. They wanted to protect their families. Prisoners in the Gulag knew that they were innocent, and they knew that it would be sorted out, eventually… but they also secretly believed that everyone else there was guilty. Some of them simply bought the party line. They hated their fellow prisoners because they were “wreckers;” even after having been tortured during interrogation, even knowing of their own innocence … they remained afraid, and they remained convinced by the propaganda.
My biggest fear is that what we’re experiencing right now is really not all that different from what happened in Russia, and has happened across the globe since the beginning of time. We are experiencing the onset of actual tyranny, wherein people must be protected from themselves and from each other, by placing their trust in the all-knowing state. Truth is what the party says it is. Anthony Fauci says that two masks are better than one, that potential mutations require us to stay fearful indefinitely – I read an article, though, saying that Anthony Fauci (somehow now a lawmaker) assures us that there will be no “vaccine passports!” – and you had better trust him, because he is the expert. No, we don’t operate on objective definitions, anymore. We don’t worry about the scientific method (and all the scientific journals are on board with this!). Forget about any of the doctors and epidemiologists who have presented contrary data, or studies, or viewpoints … they are not state-sanctioned experts. Truth is what the party says it is. Reality is what the party says it is.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn recognized and understood that all of his colleagues had their reasons for not speaking out. He recognized and understood that his countrymen had their reasons for not rising up. And he spent three large volumes in thousands of pages of The Gulag Archipelago, not just calling them out, but condemning them in the harshest terms possible, saying: “You are responsible for this. And you are responsible for ensuring that it never happens again.”
Published in General
The worst part of our state’s rule is that Businesses are made into the enforcers. They could lose their licenses or be subject to huge fines if their customers do not wear masks. Many small businesses have been fined, and a couple closed, for defying the mask regulations. This is Evil.
Time to find a new church as well.
Because the only mask that even sort of works (in extremely limited settings) is the n95 mask. It would be impossible to mandate proper usage. So they say “well, we will get as close as possible” (kind of like masks in between bites). That is how the bureaucratic mind works. Never does “no action is better than pointless or even harmful action” ever enter into the thought process.
I wanted to wear my kids Star Wars Clone Trooper mask to the grocery store once but my wife vetoed it. My son had to wear a mask to volunteer at a cafe so he made a “placebo mask” out of practically sheer cheesecloth and kept it in his wallet. Nobody blinked an eye because they all knew it was stupid. My daughter works at Subway and refused to wear one, questioning three different managers at three different times about it. Eventually they agreed to let her wear a face shield or be fired. The face shield doesn’t really even block her mouth so she can breath great and the fact that this device does nothing matters little to the managers.
The mask I wear is so stupid that it’s laughable.
What’s not laughable is taking my four-year-old grand daughter shopping and she automatically pulling a mask from her pocket before we enter the store, and then hesitating before she enters.
She’s four. She’s four years old, and tucked a mask into her pocket before she left home.
Shoot me.
I enjoyed reading this post and agree with your thoughts on this entire mask charade.
I live in rural Texas and for the most part, the mask mandates have been ignored. The cities are different – people act more like sheep in the cities and wear masks religiously.
The Left has lost God and are looking for something to replace Him. For when you don’t believe in God, you will believe in anything.
And why does anyone listen to this clown?:
It is like listening to a doomsday cult – always changing the parameters and dates of his prophecies for when disaster will hit.
Solzhenitsyn made a prescient statement at the end of In the First Circle, to the effect that the victors appropriate the ideas of the vanquished. So it has turned out to be. He saw the moral rot of the West many decades ago, and said so, and was pilloried by all sides in the West. “Modernity” and “Post-Modernity” are depraved, to the core. Solzhenitsyn still speaks to us, but the West still refuses to listen. It is not silence. It is that the voices cannot be heard against the uproar of the Left.
My wife and I homeschooled our children for this very reason. I work with kids, and particularly kids with trauma… what we’re doing right now is artificially creating a sort of trauma in every kid who we convince that it is necessary to wear masks, avoid human contact, etc… and it is a lie, pure and simple. The unnecessary mental health problems we have created for entire generations of kids based on our ignorance and selfish stupidity is astonishing. To say we should be ashamed doesn’t even scratch the surface.
We were a proud nation once. COVID has demonstrated that we are now a coddled nation. We are undeniably a nation in decline. Someone in a different forum posted this http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
My favorite quote. “The heroes of declining nations are always the same—the athlete, the singer or the actor. The word ‘celebrity’ today is used to designate a comedian or a football player, not a statesman, a general, or a literary genius.”
Fact check: True. But if you read the whole thing, America is the embodiment of a nation in decline. I’ve said before, I think the 2012 Election was the real Flight 93 election, and America lost. That was the election between a “Life of Julia” / “Government as parent for your entire life” candidate that wanted to take a big step towards socialism and a left-leaning Republican that wanted to move ever so slightly towards capitalism and away from socialism. The people chose a big step towards socialism. Then COVID made even people that claimed to be conservatives suddenly fine with government having complete control over which businesses were allowed to operate and which were forced to shutter. Once you’ve accepted that, there is no way back.
We were a proud nation once.
Have you tried simply not wearing one where you live? If so, what was the response?
I don’t get out much, so for me it’s not too much of a problem. I walk through our little downtown everyday maskless and have found a big smile and cheery “hello” to be very effective when approaching a masked stranger.
I work with only one other individual and neither of us wear a mask. Though we will mask up when we (rarely) see clients as they are mostly older.
I do put on a mask when I go into one of our small, little shops. I want to support them with my $$ and I don’t want them to get in trouble.
I mentioned in a comment a few weeks ago that I think the end times are nigh as I saw an employee at Trader Joe’s be rude to a customer (snapped at her, then chased her down to tell her that her mask wasn’t covering her nose). I know an employee, when I told him about it he mentioned that they’ve had health officials trolling around looking for non-compliance. And it’s the store, and then the employees, who get in trouble for not enforcing the “rules”.
Yes, I’ve found the mask signs are largely for show. I’ll take a mask in my wallet or pocket, but I won’t put it on unless asked. I’ve found no one asks. And more people are taking them off.
My kids are uncomfortable with breaking the rule, but one day, my daughter saw a man without a mask and she asked why. I told her because he was free and asked if she wanted to be like him. She said yes, so we took our masks off.
Agreed. But there is still something of that great nation in our DNA. I am seeing more and more people begin to at least listen to what should be mainstream conservative/classical-liberal ideas as applied to what has become an unbelievably hysterical and disproportionate response to covid. There are more and more people who find that they bristle at the tyrannical approach that has been so fully embraced over the past year. It is still possible for people to emerge from this madness having actually learned something, but that is only possible if intelligent conservatives and libertarians who are able to articulate their viewpoints have the courage to actually speak up; to speak loudly, and to speak often, even when there is much at stake.
I’m wondering if I want to break my no mask buying rule and get my kids “dissident” masks.
”A Tyrant Made Me Wear This”
”This Mask Doesn’t Work”
”I Can’t Breathe”
”I Wear This To Protect Your Feelings”
I could probably make them… and then order a bunch of anyone else wants them.
I think the better message is to simply not wear them. Even with respect to the notion that private businesses will be punished, the reality is that our “courtesy” in wearing the masks really doesn’t do anyone any service whatsoever. If even 25% of people outright refused to wear them, it would be absolutely unenforceable. At some point, businesses stop even trying to enforce, and the government isn’t going to step in and shut everyone down. It is simply impossible. The only reason these idiotic mandates are able to survive is because nobody wants to be that one person who gets in trouble or gets yelled at or whatever, and so, even though it is likely a majority of people who think the whole thing is nonsense, you end up with everyone voluntarily relinquishing their liberty.
I mentioned elsewhere this idea that came up in an EconTalk episode years ago, with respect to mob behavior. Some people (the “zeros”) will throw a brick with no provocation at all. Some, (the “ones”) will do it after one other person does it. Then the “threes,” and “fours,” and so on. This is how a mob grows. At the tail end, there are people who will only do something that virtually everyone else is doing.
With masks, one person has to be willing to refuse. Then 2, and then 3, and then 4. It becomes a movement where finally an entire population is standing up against tyrannical government and asserting its own right of self-governance and individual liberty. This is especially possible because virtually all of these mandates operate on a very sketchy theory of legal authority.
I did not have the freedom to do homeschooling for other reasons. It’s an issue involving a lot of prayer. So my kids are trapped at school wearing masks and I need some way to protest the school’s mask policy.
I might be able to get my 12 year old to say no, but that seems to much to ask if the 9 and 6 year old.
I agree.
Yes, that may be but I think the only way we win this is to force the issue. Courage is contagious. I see every encounter as a raid – a chance to probe the enemy’s works and find weaknesses, to let them know we’re here and we intend to fight and hopefully put them on the defensive. I follow the Patton example, “The best way to defend is to attack and the best way to attack is to attack.”
Just like this guy.
Schools are another matter, entirely, because you cannot simply refuse. But if enough parents swarm the school board meetings or with letters to the superintendent… I don’t think it is an easy thing to do, but I do think it is a necessary thing to do. The damage we’re doing to kids will be long-lasting.
Well, I made my first phone call. I’ll keep calling.
No one I know on a face to face basis is into masks or into being vaxxed.
We do not care what other people do, and if someone feels safest by wearing a HazMat suit when out and about, I sure as heck don’t care. As long as they don’t make me wear one.
We all know the Big Pharma/Bill Gates owned government is not at any point short of an actual uprising about to make masks illegal. For one thing, they are a very cheap paper item that is making scads of money for everyone involved.
I get so frustrated by the store employees. Things have been so awful for them, but their attitude is “We just have to wait it out and see when we will be allowed to breathe again.” Some of these employees have to be among the same crowds of HS-ers who 3 years ago were marching around, supposedly ready to give their lives to take away our guns.
At the local Grocery Outlet, one clerk said if they are caught pushing their masks up when dizzy & are about to faint, they get written up. The 3rd time they are written up, they are suspended for a day at home without pay. (Sad to consider their great grand dads fought WWII).
Perhaps, but once you’ve conceded that complete government control of the economy is appropriate whenever you are personally afraid of something, you’ve lost all principled opposition to the left’s advocacy for government control of the economy for something they are afraid of (e.g., global warming or systemic racism.)
And this is the primary reason for my post and my opposition to Mr. Boudreaux’s position on whether it is right to call out his colleagues for their silence. What you’re describing is not uncommon on the conservative intellectual right, even though it is blatantly at odds with so many truths that these individuals apply in virtually every other context where they are not personally afraid. It describes the majority of writers at NR, and a few other places as well. It is, at that point, the responsibility of level-headed conservatives and libertarians to shake our friends awake. That accountability is absolutely crucial if we have any hope of engaging in a level-headed analysis and discussion of this topic that has enabled the greatest degree of authoritarianism since world war 2.
With respect to the facts about covid, which are available to anyone with eyes to read and the desire to seek out actual information rather than wallow in an almost entirely unnecessary and disproportionate fear, this article is fantastic:
https://rationalground.com/covid-is-not-a-hoax-but-the-numbers-are-a-look-at-the-first-flu-season-with-covid/
I don’t like wearing masks, don’t like that my kids have to wear them to school, look forward to when that’s no longer required, but honestly, I can’t say it’s been a big deal at all. They’re fine with wearing them, annoyed at times I’m sure, but not traumatized in the least. They’re not learning to fear human contact or having nightmares or developing complexes or anything. I’ve not heard any other parent say anything like that about their kids.
Also – no colds this year. Not one in our house all school year long. That has never happened before. And that’s particularly nice for my youngest, who often has asthma attacks when he gets congested from a head cold. No asthma attacks in over a year. Can’t say that’s from the masks, of course, but I would be surprised if it’s not related to the combination of the various covid measures.
Just putting another perspective out there. I’m not pro-mask generally. If they’re not effective, then I’m all for ditching them. But I disagree that it’s doing any significant harm.
As for making or buying “dissent” masks, my little rebellion is: I will not purchase the chains of my oppression. I only wear the disposable masks given to me by health-care offices. My clinic is so paranoid, they insist on giving patients a new mask every time they go there, so I am accumulating a nice little stash. And when we are in Tennessee, Neutral Observer and I may just have a little mask-burning ceremony, if we can find a suitable place.
I would fully support people’s right to wear masks if they believe that they should. For some, it is no big deal. I think the longer term impacts on children are going to be devastating, even though some children might also be unaffected (parenting still plays a huge role). Kids learn to communicate based on facial expressions, kids relate to other people (as do adults) based on facial expressions … but also, if you tell your kids that they are disease vectors and a danger to everyone around them, that will eventually take its toll, even if all it does is change their outlook on human interaction, and even if that change is not apparent for years or even decades.
As for the cold and flu, I don’t think it has disappeared, I think it has been renamed. Possibly, not going to school and staying away from people in general will reduce instances of the cold (though, interestingly, “covid” cases seem to have increased at roughly the same rate that colds and flus decreased… which should raise a few eyebrows) – but a lack of exposure to pathogens also damages our immune systems. Be aware of the possibility that there may be a price to pay somewhere down the road. All of these are things that were previously commonly understood and recognized in epidemiology. It is astonishing what knowledge we’ve discarded.
This is much the same with my granddaughters. They (and my daughter) are especially fortunate in that at 4 and 5, they’re only 14 months apart. So they have not suffered months of loneliness with no playmates. They have each other, and my daughter’s best friend’s 4 year old is a regular.
But I do know some young mothers who are absolutely freaked out. I bought my daughter an annual pass at our local arboretum. According to her, the few other young mothers whose paths she has crossed are masked up, their kids are masked up, and my daughter and her family (unmasked) are avoided.
Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer (who live in nearby Venice) purchased a kayak. Recently when they walked across the beach to the water, a masked up family saw their unmasked faces, said something about masks being required. Then packed up and left. The last thing Ann and Phelim hear was the young boy saying “mommy, are we going to be okay?”
And even now, I know grandmothers who have gone long stretches without seeing their grand children because the mothers were worried.
So yes, I do believe there are traumatized children out there.
BTW, we have also had an amazing year with no colds. Since we’re so lazy with masks, I credit the hand washing.
Both Fauci and Gates have given speeches stating that since the COVID lockdowns allowed for the collection of data showing a “cleaner atmosphere” due to fewer cars being driven, then it makes perfect sense for officialdom to plan on having a similar lockdown for the sake of saving the planet.
This has been confirmed. They’re not effective and so we should have ditched them long ago. The harm is clear, we’re telling our children that they have to do something absurd. It’s no different than telling them that water is poisonous, or that certain people are bad for having a particular skin color. These are lies, and we’re harming our children by allowing them to marinate it them.