Life Site: Soft-totalitarianism is here, and it will continue to cement its hold on our society. The way to combat it is by changing the culture that sustains it. The policeman Chesterton spoke of—the one sent into our homes to ensure that we brush our teeth for the collective good—is sent only if the collective agrees that it is good. We must remind our compatriots that it is not good; that comfort and security are not together the end-all and be-all; that, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
One century ago, the elites of Britain planned to shave the heads of the poor, of little girls and little boys, to curb the spread of lice. G.K. Chesterton was appalled that anyone could be tyrannical enough to think that the humane thing to do was precisely to dehumanize, and vowed:
With the red hair of one she-urchin in the gutter I will set fire to all modern civilization…She is the human and sacred image; all around her the social fabric shall sway and split and fall; the pillars of society shall be shaken, and the roofs of ages come rushing down, and not one hair of her head shall be harmed.
Today, the medicine-men and the statists behind them call for their fellow citizens to be destroyed for their own good. Never mind a hair: they wish to shave the unvaccinated and conscientious objectors off of society itself. They hope to isolate them with passports and to suffocate them in their isolation with masks. In so doing, they risk the social fabric. They risk the pillars of society. They risk the roofs of ages.
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