by Selwyn Duke, American Thinker:
Brown University professor Emily Oster has created quite a stir with her recent article asking for a “pandemic amnesty.” In it, she calls for “both sides” in the COVID debate to forgive each other so we can focus on solving current problems. If Oster wanted exposure, she certainly got it, with commentators far and wide responding to her plea. If she wanted to heal wounds and close chasms, however, she failed miserably. Many have told her to go pound sand.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Genuine calls for forgiveness are noble, but, Professor Oster, you (and your critics) miss a significant point here: Forgiveness does not obviate punishment. Were it otherwise, following Jesus’s “70×7” prescription would mean emptying the prisons and hurting our beloved children by never holding them accountable for misbehavior.
So I’ll do my best to forgive, Professor Oster, but forgetting? No! I speak for many in saying that your plea is rejected — and offensive. And for there to be even the beginning of a rapprochement, there are two requirements (I’ll speak in this piece of “two sides” even though, of course, there’s much variation within each):
- You must hand over your “leaders” for judgment and justice.
- You must issue a genuine mea culpa and demonstrate that you’ve learned from your mistakes.
This matters immensely. Many on my side are angry, but I’ll nonetheless do what I and others did during the pandemic — not what you did, professor. I’ll react based on reason and not emotion and say that I’m not seeking retribution, viscerally pleasurable though it may be. And reason’s application informs that, as Herbert Spencer put it, “The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.” Thus must the foolish and often fiendish pandemic puppeteers be in the dock — and thus must their erstwhile puppets demonstrate that they’ve learned from the past.
Unfortunately, though, professor, you appear to have learned virtually nothing. You speak as if the COVID battles were some kind of mutual misunderstanding that degenerated into an ugly rift. This is yet another slap in the face. There was nothing mutual about it, not in terms of misunderstandings or malevolence or power or persecution.
Though many of us counseled against COVIDian madness, my side was content to let you and your fellow travelers wear a mask, or three masks; take a genetic-therapy agent (GTA) shot, or five; social distance by six feet, or 60; shut down your businesses and lock yourselves indoors for one month, or six; and generally behave like mysophobic Chicken Littles. But that wasn’t good enough.
Not only did you impose your mask empire and distancing fancies on us, but you shut down our businesses as part of a COVID regulation regime; destroyed livelihoods; impoverished people; caused untold numbers of lockdown-induced, secondary-effect deaths; and tried coercing us into taking the GTAs under pain of career destruction, firing tens of thousands of Americans who resisted your will. Why, CNN medical analyst Dr. Leana Wen, cheered on by millions of you and speaking for many more, actually said that people such as me, GTA realists, should be prohibited from participating in society and banished to our homes. You also censored us when we dared explain our dissent, said we were killing people and impugned our character and patriotism.
Read More @ AmericanThinker.com
