I’m a boring trad Tory middle England bloke with a wife, two annoying kiddies, a cat that can’t be arsed to chase mice and a dog that eats the post. But when I read Chris Whitty was being hounded by activists, instead of being shocked and going tsk, tsk, my first thought was: good. I hope you were afraid, just like you made us afraid.
But then I thought about it. I’m a nominal Christian after all. Is that really the way to make things better? Is this ever the right thing to do?
And the conclusion I’ve come to is yes. Yes it is. Until people with authority & power feel their own lives & sense of security will take a turn for the worse as a consequence of them messing up so many other people’s lives, nothing will change, at least not for the better. I don’t wear a mask anymore, anywhere, and I just ignore the half hearted bloke on the door telling me to. I’m done. I visit my family whenever I want because I’m done. I am so utterly done with this madness. I’m at the point things kicking off ugly would be a relief because that way the bad things are going in two directions and not just one.
I want this to be just disobedience but I’m up whatever at this point.
You SHOULD wear a mask! I’ve just started door-to-door mask selling, at a modest 10x mark-up! Where will my business be if it doesn’t find customers?
On a more serious note, as a Christian, aren’t we obliged to obey the people in Government, so as to keep society civil? If we feel that we can just pick and choose, what sort of example are we setting FOR THE CHILDREN? (That should stop all argument!)
Wasn’t it that Martin Luther King guy who said that good citizens had a duty to break bad laws?
Dr Whitty wasn’t harassed by “activists” from I saw, it looked more like a couple of good natured drunks having a laugh. He wasn’t hurt. It’s a storm in a teacup.
“Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”
Does Caesar own your face? Does Caesar own your body? Does Caesar own your soul?
As a Christian, you are deliberately not obliged to obey the people in government – because the place of Christians is not to keep society civil. The place of Christians is to represent and live the will of Christ.
That’s the guy who drove moneylenders and vendors out of the temple with a rope and what could definitely be argued was a displeased expression. That was most definitely illegal. They had all the requisite permits and social expectations.
It just wasn’t right.
We know where Christ came down on the side of legal vs. right.
The problem is that John Collier might be all up for protestors going around Chris Whitty’s house at midnight and making a fuss but I bet he’s less enthusiastic when Antifa/BLM do the same to their objects of ire (like they did with the Portland Mayor and Police Chief).
After all, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
The problem with that, John Galt, is that the social compact has already been broken. By them. At some point things come to a head and arguing from a point of principle is useless.
That being said, the best thing to do is to ignore and try and trip up the State at every turn. Most likely they’ll pretend we don’t exist or are very small in numbers, so as not to matter, or it catches on and eventually their rules fall by the wayside.
Hancock being sacked is one example of these people paying some price for the rules they inflict on us. However my impression is that, in the US, more than one governor and official is still in post despite it having gone viral that their ‘viral’ regulations were being enforced on their subjects but not on themselves. As a state becomes more corrupt, the sanction of the rules applying also to the rulers becomes less.
I’ve argued before that arbitrary enforcement/non-enforcement of the ‘hate speech’ laws is a key part of their ability to survive and flourish (not literally arbitrary of course – politically motivated and therefore predictable enforcement/non-enforcement). Free speech first grew in a community that had experience of the alternative to customary free expression being periodic violent expression (and the wisdom to make a better choice; other communities had the same experience but not the same wisdom). As our free speech is diminished, those older modes of expressing political conflict should be expected to return – expected, that is, by people with an atom of historical and political understanding of why we gained free speech in the first place, so it will be a great surprise to some.
This is analogous to the lockdown situation. When you deprive people of very ordinary freedoms to save them from debatable dangers and then show signs of becoming addicted to that habit precisely as the better-analysed dangers are seen to be less than was claimed, the same applies. In spring a year ago, our political class talked of the UK lockdown having to be short because “it would not be practical politics” to keep people locked up for three months. As we and they learn more of what is practical, their caution grows less as their need for it grows more. Readers may know the quote about the human habit to think a thing less likely to happen because it has not happened for some time “when it is precisely the elapse of time during which it has not happened that is making the event more likely.”
It is indeed time to say NO – and not just in the United Kingdom.
The Western world is being driven off a cliff – if people just carry on in this direction, over the cliff we all go.
Endless government spending and endless regulations (with their lying justifications) are destroying the Western world.
Nicely put.
But Paul, the real architect of Christianity, said we should obey the authorities! (So there!)
Nicholas – that depends on what the authorities are doing and what they are ordering.