Almost my entire family view me as a crackpot when I recite every liberty taken from the public due to “protecting others” from COVID-19. The United States and western democracies are not founded on the principles of collective good. They are founded on the principle of individual liberty and the rights of man (man in the generic sense meaning human… duh).
In France, for instance, parliament approved a bill earlier this week that extends the country’s state of emergency until late September. The bill allows President Emmanuel Macron to introduce a health pass, showing whether someone has been vaccinated against Covid-19 or not, as well as curfews across the nation.
The move was seen as controversial by some of Macron’s liberal allies: after all, instructing your citizens to be home by a certain time and tracking their medical information is hardly consistent with France’s liberal traditions.
Over the course of his presidency, Macron has been accused of drifting from the centrist liberal platform on which he was elected in 2017, most notably taking a harder line on Islam and immigration to compete with his top political rival, the far-right Marine Le Pen.
CNN
All of Europe is in trouble.
In Austria, Slovenia, Belgium and Lithuania to name a few, there is serious concern that governments have misused existing laws to restrict the liberty of citizens. In fact, DRI listed only Spain out of the 27 EU member states as a country of “no concern” when it came to parliamentary or legal oversight of Covid measures.
The most egregious example probably comes from Hungary, where the government passed legislation that allowed it to rule by decree with no judicial review.
CNN
Canada is still arresting pastors for conducting religious services.
For now the United States is bucking the trend. Some states have curtailed government’s hunger for control while others have gone totally bonkers. Will the people of the United States be able to stand together to resist this push against individual liberty and the Constitution?
Image by John Hain from Pixabay