'All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray'

Michael Walsh24 Apr, 2020 4 Min Read
That sheep may safely graze.

You knew this was coming:

Public want radical response to climate change with same urgency as coronavirus, poll finds

The government should be more radical and put in place serious policies to fight the climate crisis with the same urgency as it has to coronavirus, voters believe. A new survey by pollsters Opinium found 48 per cent of the public agree that the government should respond "with the same urgency to climate change as it has with Covid-19", with just 28 per cent saying it shouldn't.

Environmentalists said the polling figures were a "green light" for the government to be more ambitious in tackling the climate crisis and that politicians had not yet caught up with public opinion on the issue. The polling is the latest evidence that public opinion is moving fast towards seriously tackling the crisis, following a surge in attention given in the issue last year amid international protests. The start of 2020 was punctuated with climate-related disasters like forest fires in Australia and major flooding.

Yes, it's the Independent, a left-wing British newspaper. and, yes, we've been seeing this conflation of the coronavirus and "climate change" for at least the past month. The overreaction to Covid-19 has resulted in the summary abrogation of the First Amendment in the United States without so much as a shot fired, and in the imposition of lockdown orders in formerly semi-democratic Britain and in the never-really-democratic "social democracies" on the Continent. As Dr. Scott W. Atlas of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University writes in The Hill:

The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions.... Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.

Not to those who wish to rule. Politicians the world over, it seems, just couldn't wait to unleash the heavy hand of government on their hapless, trusting citizens. and now, having gotten a free look at how willingly the people transform themselves into sheep, petty tyrants in statehouses around the U.S. and in European capitals are hardly likely to let go. It seems that all you have to do is stand on a podium surrounded by doctors, frighten people into think they'll all soon be extras on The Walking Dead, and you can get away with anything, the Constitution be damned.

Hey -- polls say so!

But activists say the coronavirus has also "created an unrivalled opening" for more radical measures, with old political certainties about the role of the state evaporating overnight. The UK has committed to cutting its carbon output to net zero but its own Committee on Climate Change has warned that its current measures are far from adequate to meet its legal goal.

And thus is the game given away. Never mind that the "legal goal" is a fiction that can easily be repealed. The absurd panic over the coronavirus is now being used as a stalking horse for further, even more punitive measures against the citizenry. After all, if the government can forbid you to leave your home out of fear of the flu, what can't it do? Further, the longer the lockdowns last, the more "new normal" they will come to seem, so that the next government mandate, and the next, and the next, will be seen as part of a legitimate continuum, rather than the enormities they are.

Already, those advocating for a swift reopening of the economies are being accused of wanting to kill grandma by the moral brow-beaters. In their eyes, even one death is too many, and the capitalist economies should not reopen until we can absolutely guarantee that no one will ever die of anything ever again. For them, the impossibly perfect future is always the enemy of the good enough right now.

And that's why we're seeing a concerted push from the Left to merge the virus with their fascist fantasy of "global warming," the cure for which would not simply disable the West for a time, but permanently destroy it, its infrastructure, its political systems, and its culture. We cannot let them succeed, lest they talk us into suicide.

The fact is, in a democracy, or even in its simulacrum, unelected doctors should not set public policy. Certainly, they can advise. But a nation held hostage by epidemiologists in scarves who can overrule the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of religion, religious practice, and peaceable assembly is no longer a functioning Republic. As the "green" advocates know all too well:

“I think these polling figures are really exciting. That is a pretty big green light to say government’s should be far more ambitious when it comes to tackling the climate crisis then that have ever dreamed of being before," Green MP Caroline Lucas told the Compassion in Politics Podcast, which commissioned the poll.

"This polling shows that yet again the public are far ahead of the politicians and if those politicians can put in place a clear strategy with clear tactics along the way then they can bring the public with them and we can then, I think, get ourselves on to a much safer course when it comes to climate than we are currently on. So I am very excited by this poll and I hope it will be a spur to more action on climate."

The Covid-19 crisis itself has produced a major, if temporary, cut in carbon emissions, with analysts predicting the largest ever fall in CO2 output as economic activity grinds to a halt or moves online across the globe.

The "progressives" are trying to forge a chain from coronavirus to "climate change." Having softened up the population and herded them into pens, unleashed the petty police on them, and condemned them to a life of terrified solitude until their masters deign to free them (with restrictions, of course!), government is now very nearly free of all constitutional and moral restrictions.

Handel nailed this in one of the choruses from Messiah:

Meanwhile, where are the lawyers? Where is the ACLU? Where is the conservative legal establishement?  In fact... where are the conservatives?

 

Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints, and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and its sequel, The Fiery Angel. Last Stands, a study of military history from the Greeks to the present, was published by St. Martin's Press in December 2019. He is also the editor of Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order, published on Oct. 18, 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @theAmanuensis

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4 comments on “'All We Like Sheep Have Gone Astray'”

  1. The conservatives are decent people who are continuing to pray that the left gets medicated and comes to their senses. But if a Civil War is required, so be it. Keep pushing, lefties. You’re louder, but you’re not larger in number (at least, not in the US). People are on to you.

  2. In north Texas the wheels are starting to come off on the 'lockdown'. A Dallas beauty salon owner has been cited for opening for business in spite of governmental order and says she will continue to do so regardless of the fines imposed. There are numerous demonstrators outside of the business in support of her actions. What will the officials do? Physically close her down? Jail her?
    This will start happening across the nation, will draconian responses become normal or will the authorities back off? I pray to God this does not turn into a flash point for what has been brewing since before Pres. Trump took office.

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