Have you ever wondered why, despite the incredibly low case fatality rate, the relatively low incidence rate, the overwhelming percentage of at-risk individuals being comprised of strictly the elderly, and more still, elderly with comorbidities; the prestigious list of scientists who have questioned the efficacy and wisdom of government lockdown measures, or outright condemned them as completely disproportionate relative to the danger (Michael Levitt, John Ioannidis, Knut Wittkowski, Johan Giesecke, Sunetra Gupta, just to name a handful), the scarcity of evidence regarding the efficacy of face masks and social distancing as preventative measures in public settings, the inconsistency with which mortality and incidence rates manifest around the world, the inconsistency with which public health measures are enforced, or that the enforcement seems lightest towards groups who are seen as expeditious to the greater consolidation and expansion of government power …yes, have you every wondered why, despite all of this, that the screws of state control seem to tighten ever more, with no hope of loosening for the foreseeable future?

Well, the answer is simple: All of those statistics, and all of the voices of all of those demurring and suspicious scientists, despite what may be intuitive to us, must and do necessarily affirm, not deny, the blatant increases we are seeing in the practical manifestation of the state’s insatiable totalitarian ambitions.

Let’s take a moment to think about something fundamental. That is, what are we fundamentally admitting when we cry foul at draconian government intrusion upon the rights of life, liberty, association, and property in response to a virus that only has a 1-2% mortality rate, and poses no statistically significant risk to anyone under 21, and only a very minor risk to those between the ages of 21 – 65? What are we conceding when we declare that face masks do not actually work in preventing the spread of coronavirus and more than likely pose a substantial health risk for long term users due to cumulative oxygen deprivation, and the persistent taxing of the body’s cardiopulmonary functions?

Go ahead and take a moment to think about it. I’m sure you will get it, if you haven’t already…

Got it?

Of course you do.

What we are conceding, when we discuss the implied relationship between the numbers and the state’s response, is that the government has the fundamental right to use its coercive violent power to compel individual behavior in order to manage an individual’s risk. We are admitting that the individual does not have a natural right to decide for him or herself what risk to take or not take, or what levels of risk they have deemed acceptable for themselves in service to their own lives, but that, to some degree, inexorably, immutabely, everyone must and shall be managed by state force.

We are conceding that we, the people, do not have full autonomy of our own existence, but that there is a part of our own lives that shall be ever off limits to us, and severed from our wills and our wishes and our minds; that a part of us belongs entirely to the state, to be pushed prodded and threatened and dictated to, irrespective of whatever we feel or desire. We imply that if only the coronavirus were a bit more deadly, then coercive government violence in the form of public health decrees would be acceptable, righteous, and necessary. The only reason we have a problem with what the state is doing is because the numbers are too low. In other words, we concede that the degree to which we should be free to exercise our liberty as individuals, with respect to the coronavirus, and by extension anything else, is nothing more than an academic discussion of “how much?”. How much risk is acceptable? How much liberty should we have in this circumstance or that?

The problem is that the answer to the question “how much?” can and will only ever be provided by the state. And that means totalitarianism.

The individual is a Self; the individual is singular…an “I”, a “Me”. Existentially, you are One. there are no degrees of Self; no percentage of “I”. To claim that you can outsource a part of YOU, of your YOU-NESS, to an authority who shall somehow exist as that part of you for you is folly.

What degree of health risk constitutes the transition between tyranny and liberty? Two percent? Five? 20? 50? At what point do we get to say “Whoa, hold on a minute, that number is too small, you have no authority here”?

The point at which the government must step in and take over—to live our lives for us—is a point that the individual, you and me, cannot see from our existential frame of reference. Our frame of reference is Self…is singular. Self, or “I”, is what we know from and think from and do from, and from our categorical vantage point it is absolute; it is complete; it is whole. We cannot thus claim or concede that there is part of us that is beyond our capacity to know or act from—we would have no frame of reference for this; we would have no way of knowing the amount or percentage of such a thing, or the implications of our inability to manage it, and thus to what extent it should be compelled from outside of us by an external authority.

My point is that as soon as we concede, either explicitly or implicitly, that the state may claim ownership over a part of ourselves we have conceded that the state may claim ownership over all of ourselves.

Discussing or quibbling over numbers is a non sequitur, and even worse a distraction from the real question, which is, “Does the state have a right to manage risk?” That’s the real debate. We should not demand freedom based upon the spurious and irrelevant referencing of scientists and statistics and percentages and spreadsheets and computer models. We should reject asinine, contemptible, childish, and oppressive government demands not because the virus is only one percent dangerous, but because we one hundred percent refuse to become slaves.

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