By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead
Imagine it: A national classification system that not only categorizes you according to your health status, but allows the government to sort you in a hundred other ways: By gender, orientation, wealth, medical condition, religious beliefs, political viewpoint, legal status.
It is the slippery slope upon which we are embarking, one that begins with vaccine passports and ends with a national system of segregation.
It already has begun.
With every passing day, more private businesses and government agencies on both the state and federal level are requiring proof of a COVID-19 vaccination in order for individuals to work, travel, shop, attend school, and generally participate in the life of the country.
No matter what one’s views may be regarding the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is an unnerving proposition for a country that claims to prize the rights of the individual and whose Bill of Rights was written in such a way as to favor the rights of the minority.
By allowing government agents to establish a litmus test for individuals to engage in commerce, movement and any other right that corresponds to life in a supposedly free society, it lays the groundwork for a “show-me-your-papers” society in which you are required to identify yourself at any time to any government worker who demands it for any reason.
Such tactics quickly can escalate into a power-grab that empowers government agents to force anyone and everyone to prove they are in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books. Mind you, there are thousands of statutes and regulations on the books. Indeed, in this era of over-criminalization, it is estimated that the average American unknowingly breaks at least three laws a day.
It is how the right to move about freely has been undermined, overtaken, and rewritten into a privilege granted by the government to those citizens who are prepared to toe the line.
It used to be that “we the people” had the right to come and go as we please without the fear of being stopped, questioned by police, or forced to identify ourselves. In other words, unless police had a reasonable suspicion that a person was guilty of wrongdoing, they had no legal authority to stop the person and require identification.
Unfortunately, in this age of COVID-19, that unrestricted right to move about freely is being pitted against the government’s power to lock down communities at a moment’s notice. And in this tug-of-war between individual freedoms and government power, “we the people” have been on the losing end of the deal.
Now vaccine passports, vaccine admission requirements, and travel restrictions may seem like small, necessary steps in winning the war against the COVID-19 virus, but that’s just so much propaganda. They’re only necessary to the police state in its efforts to further brainwash the populace into believing that the government legitimately has the power to enforce such blatant acts of authoritarianism.
It is how you imprison a populace and lock down a nation.
It makes no difference if such police state tactics are carried out in the name of national security, or protecting America’s borders, or making the United States healthy again: The philosophy remains the same, and it is a mindset that is not friendly to freedom.
You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.
You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.
You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.
If you’re tempted to justify these draconian measures for whatever reason—for the sake of health concerns, the economy, or national security—beware: there’s always a boomerang effect.
Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now, rest assured, these same practices can be and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.
The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police. The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance, and indefinite detention for those who dare to disagree.
The war on immigration turned out to be a war on the U.S. residents, waged with roving government agents demanding “papers, please.”
This war on COVID-19 is turning out to be yet another war on the American people, waged with all of the surveillance weaponry and tracking mechanisms at the government’s disposal. You see, when you talk about empowering government agents to screen the populace in order to control and prevent spread of this virus, what you’re really talking about is creating a society in which ID cards, round ups, checkpoints and detention centers become routine weapons used by the government to control and suppress the populace, no matter the threat.
No one is safe.
No one is immune.
And as I illustrate in my new novel, The Erik Blair Diaries, no one gets spared the anguish, fear, and heartache of living in a police state.
That’s the message being broadcast 24/7 with every new piece of government propaganda, every new law that criminalizes otherwise lawful activity, every new policeman on the beat, every new surveillance camera casting a watchful eye, every new detention center built to house troublemakers and other undesirables, every new court ruling that gives government agents a green light to strip and steal and rape and ravage the citizenry, and every new justification for why U.S. residents should comply with the government’s attempts to trample the Constitution underfoot.
Yes, COVID-19 has taken a significant toll on the Nation emotionally, physically, and economically, but there are still greater dangers on the horizon.
As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.
It’s already worse.
We’ve been having this same debate about the perils of government overreach for the past 50-plus years, and still we don’t seem to learn, or if we learn, we learn too late.
Eventually, I make clear in my book, “Battlefield America: The War on the American People,” when the police state has turned that final screw and slammed that final door, all that will matter is whether some government agent chooses to single you out for special treatment.
—The Rutherford Institute