by Brandon Smith, Alt Market:
Not long ago at the height of fear over the global pandemic the US underwent a change that many people argued would never happen. For years I have heard people say that authoritarian controls in America are “tinfoil hat conspiracy theory” and doom mongering – All the prepping, all the talk of community organizing, all the guns and the gear and the training were for nothing. Then…the covid agenda hit like a freight train.
Our constitutional rights were no longer set in stone, but mere guidelines that government officials could bend or break in the name of “public health safety.” Laws no longer had to be passed through a series of checks and balances; mandates could be implemented as if they were laws without public oversight and enforced unilaterally.
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There was talk (primarily among Democrats) of severe punishments for people who refused the pointless covid vaccines. They wanted vaccine passports, they wanted prison time for those that spoke publicly against the vax, they wanted people’s jobs taken away, they wanted their children taken away, and there were even plans to build covid detention centers to segregate and lock up “vax deniers.”
It boggles the mind, but this was serious debate within the US and it was all triggered in the span of a year. Nearly half the country was willing to abandon the Bill of Rights over a virus with a survival rate of 99.8%. The conspiracy theorists were right all along; our freedoms rest on a razor’s edge and preparing to survive and fight for those freedoms is perfectly rational.
Luckily, the covid agenda failed. The mandates were ultimately blocked by red states and in many rural areas they were barely enforced at all. Biden’s vaccine passport attempt was stopped cold by the Supreme Court, but I have long believed that the Supreme Court made this decision exactly because of the level of public resistance. They knew if they pressed the issue, civil war was on the table.
Medical authoritarianism collapsed because conservatives and independents were not onboard and they could not be shamed into compliance. But what happens when there is a crisis that DOES scare conservatives? What happens when the political right perceives a true threat? Does freedom then become untenable?
Viruses frighten progressives (most things frighten progressives), but what frightens conservatives?
Well, it’s not a hard fast rule, but generally speaking conservatives are most disturbed by the threat of invasion. Ask any conservative if they were worried about covid or worried about the crisis on the southern border during the pandemic and the vast majority of them would say the border without hesitation. Conservatives fear cultural infiltration and co-option, they fear the steady and deliberate whittling away of their American heritage and by extension their freedoms by alien impostors. And, they fear the certain blitzkrieg of the US by organized terrorism should the borders remain open.
The question is, are they willing to assuage their fears by sacrificing the very freedoms they want to protect?
In 2001 after 9/11, the conservative movement was a much different animal than it is today. This was pre-Ron Paul and pre-Libertarian influence. The Neo-cons ruled the roost and had far reaching power over public perception, making the push for the dismissal of constitutional rights unprecedented. The Patriot Act mentality was widespread and the thirst for war was palpable. I have seen conservatives stray from the Bill of Rights in the past in the name of fighting against a possible invasion. I remember this vividly.
Today, the elements in play are not the same as 2001. Anyone who argues otherwise was likely a child during the 9/11 era or has a skewed understanding of the changes that have taken place among conservatives since those days. The Ron Paul movement changed a lot for the better, but primarily within the conservative constituency. Regular people changed their thinking on what it means to trade liberty for security. The GOP? It’s a pipe dream to think we could ever completely change the GOP. At least covid proved we have allies at the state and local level
The real problem is in the old guard of Neo-cons still influencing the path of the Republican Party. These are people who happily ally with Democrats behind the scenes, they have close ties to establishment elites and their loyalty rests in the hands of globalists. If the globalists want war, then the Neo-cons want war and they will do anything to get it, including create it. That’s how it works.
And this time around I think they’re going to get what they want. The Ukraine event failed to lure Americans into supporting direct intervention (a majority of Americans don’t even support funding for Ukraine), but Israel is another matter. There are very old and tribal implications than pull on the souls of conservatives when it comes to the conflicts in the Middle East. There are religious factors, yes, but I suspect this is overblown by critics who think evangelicals are running the show. This is not reality.
The Christian mandate has nowhere near the same influence it did back in 2001. In fact, churches have become so weak that they are now being overtaken by LGBT infiltration and trans activism. This never would have been tolerated 20 years ago – They would have tarred and feathered such activists back then. If this sort of thing is being allowed to happen right in our backyards today then you can be damn sure that religion is not the driving force for war overseas.
