Australia has fallen
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Australian gun surrender — Fair dinkum*, the government will protect us, mate!
*”used to emphasize that behavior complies with accepted standards”
Who else would sabe us from becoming Australia?
A few weeks ago, a friend in Australia called and told me about the country’s new Covid app. Residents of South Australia are required to prove they’re in quarantine by using face recognition and geolocation on this app. If they fail to check in, the app will notify a bureaucrat with the state’s Health Department. That bureaucrat will then call the police. The police, in turn, will go to the citizen’s home and make sure he’s not taking an unauthorized walk so his dog can take a clandestine whizz.
“We don’t tell them how often or when, on a random basis they have to reply within 15 minutes,” said premier Steven Marshall. Fair warning, I guess.
Meanwhile, in neighboring Victoria, the government has implemented mandatory contact tracing. The state is forcing stores to force customers to “check in” before they shop. According to Victoria’s chief health officer, Professor Brett Sutton, “everyone recognizes that we have to do absolutely everything in our power to be able to chase down every single person who may be exposed because it is that one person who is not found who may be the one who spreads it.”
And you know what? Professor Sutton is right. Since the vaccines aren’t 100 percent effective, the only way we can be absolutely sure we eradicate the virus is by identifying every single carrier before they infect anyone else. If that’s Australia’s objective, they’re going to need a lot more than a smartphone app. I’m sure they’ll exhaust every resource.
I’m sure the Australians will let them, too; you can tell they’re descended from prisoners and prison-guards. Another Aussie friend once described his country as an ongoing experiment with Bentham’s Panopticon. Folks there are so worn down by constant government interference they can’t even imagine what true privacy feels like. It’s like boiling frogs—and when your country starts out as a penal colony, you’re pretty well used to the heat.
On the other hand, you can tell Americans are descended from free settlers and freed slaves. Our policy is, and always has been, “Leave me the hell alone.” It’s looking pretty good right about now, too, considering the alternative.
So, my apologies to those anti-maskers in Virginia. I rushed to judge you last summer, and that was wrong. May you continue to resist any whiff of conformism with righteous fury. May you give no quarter to the elite “consensus” of elite “institutions.” And may you never stop being pissed off. It just might save this republic.
