Our Institutions are hollowed out: Part 4

American Civil Liberties Union: "Vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties."

I like to make brief posts when I read about institutions which let us all down in 2020 and beyond. To be honest, there’s enough material to make this a full-time job.

Here’s my last post from a few months ago.

Our Institutions are hollowed out: Part 3

Today, I’m going to zoom across the Atlantic and mention the Americal Civil Liberties Union, an organisation which sees its mission as follows:

In 2008 ACLU published this document - seen at the time as somewhat of a landmark:

Here’s a downloadable PDF:

Pemic Report

711KB ∙ PDF file

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I should make it clear that I do NOT agree with most of this document, since I don’t think pandemics are true biological phenomena to which any sort of “response” of any sort, let alone a “planned” one, is needed.

More generally, I see public health as a concept as a mendacious one, captured by commercial and ideological interests, and sticking its nose where it is not needed, nearly always doing more harm than good.

But here I am more interested in showing you how the position of this institution simply melted away in the face of a tiny bit of consensus management on the part of the establishment.

Two key quotes from the report:

It’s dangerous for civil liberties. The law enforcement approach to public health offers a rationale for the endless suspension of civil liberties. The “Global War on Terror” may go on for a generation, but the war on disease will continue until the end of the human race. There will always be a new disease, always the threat of a new pandemic. If that fear justifies the suspension of liberties and the institution of an emergency state, then freedom and the rule of law will be permanently suspended.

And:

The lessons from history should be kept in mind whenever we are told by government officials that “tough,” liberty-limiting actions are needed to protect us from dangerous diseases.

Specifically:

Coercion and brute force are rarely necessary. In fact they are generally counterproductive—they gratuitously breed public distrust and encourage the people who are most in need of care to evade public health authorities.

Fast forward to 2021, and now apparently, according to the USA’s “guardian of liberty”:

“Vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties”.

I kid you not. Here’s the tweet: