The Left’s taste for totalitarianism is increasingly obvious. There have been calls from Leftists for the opponents of the still-unapproved vaccines to be shot (with a gun, not a hypodermic needle), or at the very least arrested and imprisoned, and on Thursday AP reported that Biden handlers had discussed “mandating vaccines for interstate travel,” but decided against doing so because “the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment.” For the moment. That means we should watch for this particular trial balloon to be floated again after the establishment media has pounded the American people with fear propaganda for a few more months.
Even the fact that this idea has been broached should send chills down the spine of everyone who is aware of how totalitarian regimes work. Internal passports are one of their hallmarks, as they enable easy, centralized data collection about the population and its political leanings, along with ready knowledge of each individual’s whereabouts, which is always handy when the time comes for that knock on the door at 3 a.m. At a time when the Democratic leadership is doing everything it can to stir up hysteria about a fictional “insurrection” and talking about acting against a largely chimerical “white supremacist terrorism,” the idea of internal passports should be a matter of serious concern.
On December 27, 1932, the Soviet Union established the “Unified Passport System within the USSR,” severely restricting travel within the country and requiring Soviet citizens to carry passports for travel inside the workers’ paradise, so as to aid in “the removal of persons not engaged in industrial or other socially-useful work from towns and cleansing of towns from hiding kulaks, criminals and other antisocial elements.” “Kulaks” was the Stalin regime’s word for peasants they didn’t find sufficiently enthusiastic for the arrival of Communism; the internal passports were designed to aid in identifying and rooting out such undesirable elements and enemies of the regime.
Victor Davis Hanson recently pointed out that “once the delta variant arrived in force in early summer, earlier government assurances that the vaccinated were now free to resume a normal life lost credibility. Confused and mixed messages followed — simultaneously downplaying and exaggerating the efficacy of the vaccinations.” Yet in the face of this loss of credibility, Biden’s handlers have not eased off on their vaccination push, but have only intensified it. AP noted: “When the pace of vaccinations in the U.S. first began to slow, President Joe Biden backed incentives like million-dollar cash lotteries if that’s what it took to get shots in arms.” Yes, it’s a vaccine so safe, so effective, so widely trusted, that Biden’s handlers were willing to bribe Americans to get it.
The cash lotteries were the carrot; now comes the stick. “In just the past two weeks,” says AP: “Biden has forced millions of federal workers to attest to their vaccination status or face onerous new requirements. He’s met with business leaders at the White House to press them to do the same.” And that’s not remotely all. Biden’s handlers have also “taken steps toward mandating shots for people traveling into the U.S. from overseas.” Much more is coming, “including potential support for school districts imposing rules to prevent spread of the virus over the objection of Republican leaders.”
Yet again employing the Leftist tactic of accusing his enemies of what he is guilty of, Old Joe on Thursday politicized his vaccine push while claiming his foes were the ones doing so: “To the mayors, school superintendents, educators, local leaders, who are standing up to the governors politicizing mask protection for our kids: thank you. Thank God that we have heroes like you, and I stand with you all, and America should as well.”
AP’s Zeke Miller then gives us a paragraph about Old Joe’s strict constitutionalism and magnanimity, saying that “he has refrained from using all his powers to pressure Americans to get vaccinated. He’s held off, for instance, on proposals to require vaccinations for all air travelers or, for that matter, the federal workforce. The result is a precarious balancing act as Biden works to make life more uncomfortable for the unvaccinated without spurring a backlash in a deeply polarized country that would only undermine his public health goals…. Still, while more severe measures — such as mandating vaccines for interstate travel or changing how the federal government reimburses treatment for those who are unvaccinated and become ill with COVID-19 — have been discussed, the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment.”
Wait a minute. He has “refrained from using all his powers”? What powers exactly has he declined to use? What section of the Constitution allows the president of the United States to require vaccinations for all air travelers or internal passports? What part of the Bill of Rights allows the president to take any measures whatsoever to “make life more uncomfortable for the unvaccinated”? If a pandemic justifies this level of federal overreach, what on earth would or could possibly prevent a tyrant from creating one in order to arrogate emergency powers to himself? Is the pandemic now the Left’s Reichstag fire excuse to destroy Americans’ freedom and crush dissent?
Whatever it is, AP says it has a lot of support. “According to a recent poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 51% of Americans say the federal government should recommend that employers require their workers to get vaccinated, while 45% say it should not.” And Lawrence Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University, said that Biden is “really going to have to use all the leverage the federal government has, and indeed use pressure points. And I think there are a few that he can do but he hasn’t done yet. The country is completely fatigued with lockdowns, business closures and masking, and vaccines are literally our only tool. We’ve tried masking, distancing, occupancy limits, even entire lockdowns now for coming along nearly two years. And the virus just keeps raging back. And the vaccines are the only thing we have now to defeat the virus. We need to use that tool and we need to use it vigorously. And I think there will be large public support for that.”
There will be, once the Democratic Party’s propaganda arm, that is, CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the rest have done their work. But is anyone in Washington going to stand against this race toward totalitarianism?
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