{"id":1033,"date":"2020-05-03T01:16:35","date_gmt":"2020-05-03T05:16:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coldfury.com\/?p=1033"},"modified":"2020-05-03T01:55:01","modified_gmt":"2020-05-03T05:55:01","slug":"chains-resting-lightly-upon-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/chains-resting-lightly-upon-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Chains, resting lightly upon us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Embedded in the post from Fran mentioned below is a video of last night’s Tucker Carlson monologue. I happened to catch its broadcast run myself last night while at my brother’s place, then spent a good bit of my time today desperately trying run down a transcript for posting purposes, it was so good. And finally, I did<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Last week we interviewed a longtime partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company named Peter Walker. Like so many in finance and consulting, Walker spent an awful lot of his career doing business in China. We have no idea how much money he made doing that.<\/p>\n

We do know that along the way, Walker internalized a lot of the attitudes of China\u2019s totalitarian government. During our interview, we asked Walker what he thought of China\u2019s lockdown that was imposed in an effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus.<\/p>\n

I asked Walker: \u201cNow credible reports suggest that Chinese authorities locked people in their apartments and left them to die. We know they snatched people off the streets and threw them into police vans \u2013 God knows where they went. That\u2019s the quarantine that you think they deserve high praise for. Why?\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker replied: \u201cWell I think \u2026 if you just look at the results, I know there\u2019s always going to be questions about exactly what the numbers are, but I think the harsh action that they took, given the scale of China and number of big cities in it, was exactly what they needed to do to prevent the outbreak from going any further. The reality is the outbreak hasn\u2019t gone much beyond Wuhan.\u201d<\/p>\n

The secret police kidnapping citizens off the street, authorities locking people in their apartments from the outside until they starve to death \u2013 just look at the results. All of that, Walker said, was \u201cexactly what they needed to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the view of one of America\u2019s most prominent business leaders. He didn\u2019t seem ashamed to say it. Later in our interview, Walker suggested that American authorities could have done the same things in New York, if only they\u2019d gotten an earlier start. Kind of a shame they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Your jaw dropped watching it. But here\u2019s the striking thing: nobody seemed to notice that he said it. Walker didn\u2019t find himself on the front page of The New York Times the next morning. No one in American business denounced him. He went home and went to bed. Totalitarianism doesn\u2019t shock us anymore.<\/p>\n

Maybe that\u2019s because, all of a sudden, it\u2019s all around us.<\/p>\n

Never in American history have politicians been more powerful than they are now. Effectively, they are God. In the state of Maine, Gov. Janet Mills now has the power to suspend any law she doesn\u2019t like. She can seize any state resource she feels like seizing. She can force any citizen or all citizens from their homes.<\/p>\n

The governor can do all of this for as long as she believes Maine is in a state of \u201cemergency.\u201d There is virtually nothing Janet Mills can\u2019t do. Many governors now have these powers.<\/p>\n

The First Amendment explicitly prevents government from making any law that inhibits\u00a0the exercise of religious faith. It\u2019s a cornerstone of our history and our law.<\/p>\n

Millions of people have fled to America from around the world precisely because our Bill of Rights gives them this guarantee. It\u2019s why this country was founded. Now it\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n

Where did politicians get the authority to do all this? Because some elderly, power-drunk doctor told them to? That\u2019s not how our system works \u2013 or can work.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, you\u2019ll hear some lonely civil libertarian fret that we may be on a \u201cslippery slope\u201d toward losing our rights. If only. We\u2019re already there.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve slid to the bottom of that slope. Our rights are gone. No one has explained how politicians are allowed to do this, to override the Constitution. No one seems to care. They\u2019re too afraid.<\/p>\n

But if we think this is moment scary, consider what might come next. Now that we\u2019ve ceded all authority in the country to our political leaders, what can\u2019t they do? What are the limits to their power?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a theoretical question. It\u2019s not an argument over philosophy or political theory. It\u2019s the most practical possible question. The answer will define where this country goes next. What can\u2019t politicians do in the name of public health?\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lots more betwixt my invisible ellipses, running down several more examples of the authoritarian fever currently enfeebling the nation—a mortal affliction for which there is but one known treatment. Each of tonight’s posts are intended to serve as kinda-sorta lead-ins to another one that I actually began working on last night, and may or may not get finished with tonight. If not, it’ll drop in another day or two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Embedded in the post from Fran mentioned below is a video of last night’s Tucker Carlson monologue. I happened to catch its broadcast run myself last night while at my brother’s place, then spent a good bit of my time today desperately trying run down…<\/p>\n

Would you like to know more? Chains, resting lightly upon us<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16,17,30,34,39,42,55,68,72,71,74,83,89,102,106,107,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-begins-at-home","category-believe-it-or-else","category-big-tsimmis","category-commies","category-culture-of-cowardice","category-death-to-liberty","category-disasters-near-and-far","category-gangstergovt","category-leftward-ho","category-life-in-the-ogulag","category-life-in-a-once-great-nation","category-losing","category-our-enemies","category-read-and-heed","category-the-almighty-state","category-good-and-hard","category-the-liberal-way-of-war","category-where-do-we-go-from-here","wpcat-15-id","wpcat-16-id","wpcat-17-id","wpcat-30-id","wpcat-34-id","wpcat-39-id","wpcat-42-id","wpcat-55-id","wpcat-68-id","wpcat-72-id","wpcat-71-id","wpcat-74-id","wpcat-83-id","wpcat-89-id","wpcat-102-id","wpcat-106-id","wpcat-107-id","wpcat-122-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1034,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033\/revisions\/1034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldfury.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}