Member-only story

After a Year Under Lockdown, Will Our Freedoms Survive the Tyranny of COVID-19?

John W. Whitehead
10 min readMar 23, 2021

--

“The remedy is worse than the disease.” — Francis Bacon

One way or another, the majority of Americans will survive COVID-19.

It remains to be seen, however, whether our freedoms will survive the tyranny of the government’s heavy-handed response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Indeed, now that the government has gotten a taste for flexing its police state powers by way of a bevy of lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing programs, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, etc., we may all be long-haulers, suffering under the weight of long-term COVID-19 afflictions.

Instead of dealing with the headaches, fatigue and neurological aftereffects of the virus, however, “we the people” may well find ourselves burdened with a Nanny State inclined to use its draconian pandemic powers to protect us from ourselves.

Therein lies the danger of the government’s growing addiction to power.

What started out a year ago as an apparent effort to prevent a novel coronavirus from sickening the nation (and the world) has become yet another means by which world governments (including our own) can expand their powers, abuse their authority, and further oppress their constituents.

--

--

John W. Whitehead
John W. Whitehead

Written by John W. Whitehead

Constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, is one of the nation’s leading advocates of civil liberties and human rights.

No responses yet