by James Bovard
Mises.org
Five years ago, politicians and bureaucrats went berserk and pointlessly ravaged Americans’ freedom. The Covid-19 pandemic provided the pretext to destroy hundreds of thousands of businesses, padlock churches, close down schools, and effectively place hundreds of millions of Americans under house arrest. Despite all the forced sacrifices, most Americans contracted covid and more than a million were listed as dying from the virus.
“Pandemic Security Theater Is Self-Destructive, And Won’t Make Us Safer” was the headline of my first salvo against the pandemic hysteria, published on March 24, 2020 in the Daily Caller. I scoffed at President Trump’s proclamations about being a “wartime president at war with an invisible enemy.” Wartime presidents too easily pretend they’re on a mission from God to scourge all resistance. I warned: “The pandemic threatens to open authoritarian Pandora’s Boxes. Permitting governments to seize almost unlimited power based on shaky extrapolations of infection rates will doom our republic.”