Those who cheerlead for the government's implementation of the Emergencies Act might want to consider that the Liberal party won't always be in power. What will you say if a succeeding gov't decides to award itself the power to seize Canadian citizens' bank accounts without having to provide any proof of wrong-doing? "It was okay when my side did it," isn't much of an argument.
I was immediately attacked by a couple of people, one of them being the president of the choral society which I belong to, though haven't attended for two years. It's only meeting on Zoom at the moment, but when they were still having in person practices, they required masking and vaccine passports. I won't sing in a mask and I refuse to go anywhere which demands that I show papers. Which is why I will not download my vax pass; I would rather be excluded from everything than bow to that government dictate. Anyway, the president for some reason- I certainly wasn't addressing her- felt it necessary to take me to task, suggesting among other things that I was anti-vax. I pointed out that I am vaccinated but have no desire to force other people to be, and also that I considered vaccine passports to be an immoral method of segregation as well as being functionally useless, as both vaxed and unvaxed can carry Covid. She said that I wasn't making any sense, and asked what had happened to me, as if I was spouting wild theories instead of views which were the norm until a short time ago. I responded that I had not changed: I have always believed that people should be free to make their own private medical decisions. The difference is, up to about a year ago a lot of the people who now clamour for vaccine mandates would have said that they agreed with me. It's only now that they are afraid that they've thrown their principles out the window. In any case, I've probably burned my bridges there; I was polite to her but blunt... I suppose I should be grateful that she refrained from following the example of Dear Leader Trudeau by suggesting that I must be racist as well as anti-science. I'm honestly starting to wonder, however, if this country is going to make it... I don't know how we can step back from the knowledge that a significant portion of our society is willing to not only stand by and watch their fellow Canadians be stripped of their rights, but will actively applaud it. It's frankly a bit horrifying.
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
-W.B. Yeats
"The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself."
Also:
"Only men to whom the family is sacred will ever have a standard or a status by which to criticize the State. They alone can appeal to something more holy than the gods of the city."
When I was back in town, I went trail walking with two of my sisters. Fortunately the government hasn't yet figured out how to criminalize enjoyment of the great outdoors for dissenters. Here are a few pictures from that walk: