Killing liberty: Coronavirus hysteria takes up where 9/11 left off

When it comes to killing liberty and advancing tyranny, coronavirus hysteria has taken up where 9/11 left off.

Nineteen years ago today, an Islamic terrorist group attacked liberty in America when they hijacked four commercial airliners and crashed two of them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in NYC and one into the Pentagon. The fourth jet — believed to be heading for the US Capitol — crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers attempted to overpower the hijackers and regain control.

Obviously, today is a day when we remember the tragic events of 9/11: the thousands who died, the first responders who risked their lives to save others along with the many who died trying, and the heroism of the Flight 93 passengers on the fourth plane.

Following that horrendous day, Americans vowed to never forget this tragedy and to do all they could to make sure the terrorists would never win. Noble sentiments to be sure, but little more than political rhetoric to be used by big-government Democrats AND Republicans to chip away at liberty and freedom in the name of safety and security.

Because, in addition to those thousands of lives, there was another tragedy because liberty also died on 9/11.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The Patriot Act. The Patriot Act II. Spying on Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA). Fake cell towers to tap your cell phone. These and many other attacks on liberty began under George W. Bush — one of the many evidences that “compassionate conservative” was really code for “progressive” — and grew under Barack Obama.

The post-9/11 liberty-killing trend has continued under Donald Trump. In a piece I wrote in 2017 commemorating 9/11, I documented the host of ways that Trump — who claims he predicted 9/11 in his book The America We Deserve — was keeping Bush’s and Obama’s terrorism policies in place.

Under Trump’s “leadership,” we have witnessed the creation of the US Cyber Command within the NSA, an idea originally proposed by Obama, giving the agency greater power to spy on Americans. Trump and the GOP have also reauthorized FISA-702 to give the NSA authority to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance on Americans.

But 9/11 was only the beginning of killing liberty. In 2020, coronavirus hysteria has continued the work.

In an article I wrote back in March — Coronavirus hysteria: The end of liberty and the race toward tyranny — I referenced an excellent article written by  John Whitehead, the founder and president of the Rutherford Institute. It is his contention (and mine as well) that we could be on the verge of the creation of a full-blown police state.

“This coronavirus epidemic, which has brought China’s Orwellian surveillance out of the shadows and caused Italy to declare a nationwide lockdown, threatens to bring the American Police State out into the open on a scale we’ve not seen before.

“If and when a nationwide lockdown finally hits — if and when we are forced to shelter in place — if and when militarized police are patrolling the streets — if and when security checkpoints have been established — if and when the media’s ability to broadcast the news has been curtailed by government censors — if and when public systems of communication (phone lines, internet, text messaging, etc.) have been restricted — if and when those FEMA camps the government has been surreptitiously building finally get used as quarantine detention centers for American citizens — if and when military “snatch and grab” teams are deployed on local, state, and federal levels as part of the activated Continuity of Government plans to isolate anyone suspected of being infected with COVID-19 — and if and when martial law is enacted with little real outcry or resistance from the public — then we will truly understand the extent to which the government has fully succeeded in recalibrating our general distaste for anything that smacks too overtly of tyranny.

“This is how it begins.”

It’s an indisputable fact that socialism and tyranny have grown during this so-called pandemic.

I’ve documented how Washington made Ivanka’s feminist socialist dream of government-mandated paid family leave a reality. One of the first coronavirus bailouts — Families First Coronavirus Response Act — included taxpayer-funded paid family leave and provisions for taxpayer-funded sick leave.

Socialist ideals such as prison reform, so-called gun control, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal have also seen major advances.

9/11 brought us the PATRIOT Act, so it was with a bit of irony that coronavirus hysteria has brought us a Patriot Act for healthcare. Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner, has been working with his father-in-law on a proposal that would form a government/private sector partnership to create a new “surveillance and data collection system” used to track coronavirus Americans.

Apple and Google have been developing new hardware and software that will give Kushner exactly what he wants. And while the two tech giants claim that their tracking system will completely protect privacy, protecting privacy has never been the prime directive. The whole point of creating a Patriot Act for healthcare is to make the names, phone numbers, and locations of people available to the government in real-time.

If the NSA has shown us anything since 9/11, it’s that once government has this information, there’s no limit to what it can do with it.

To use the worn-out phrase used by Big Brother, coronavirus hysteria has made killing liberty and advancing tyranny the “new normal.”

 

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David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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