In the last issue of the Choice Insider I shared quotes from a book I read over the holidays entitled, ‘Canary In a COVID World: How Propaganda and Censorship Changed Our (My) World’ – A collection of essays from 34 contemporary thought leaders.
In this ongoing book review, as Part 2, I finish with Chapters 20 – 34.
My favourite of all 34 authors is Lord Sumpton, a British author, mediaeval historian, and former senior judge who sat on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Lord Sumpton accurately describes our relationship with authority, fear, responsibility and freedom.
One of his quotes that resonates with me is:
“Most despotisms come into being not because a despot has seized power, but because people willingly surrender their freedoms in return for security.”
These last four years have been a tremendous learning opportunity – about others, and about ourselves. If these nuggets resonate with you, I encourage you to read the entire book.
Ted
“To claim these vaccines are “safe and effective” while minimizing and disregarding the adverse events is unconscionable." p. 259
"Health care professionals should have the ability to accurately communicate the risks and benefits of a medical intervention to their patients without fear of retaliation by the federal government." p. 259
"Like every other medical intervention, there are adverse effects from vaccination." p. 261
"You and the rest of the world have managed to survive the largest, most globally coordinated psychological warfare operation in the history of mankind: the COVID crisis." p. 273
"The use of military-grade PsyWar methods on civilian populations to alter election outcomes, to weaponize fear, and to influence or control (literally) all information, beliefs and emotions of civilian populations is just too lucrative and enticing for those for whom the ends justify the means." p. 274
"Challenge authority when it is wrong. Don’t allow yourself to be bullied. Don’t give up, and don’t get depressed." p. 284
"We are fighting now not only for our medical freedom, but for our very sovereignty." p. 285
"This is a war for my mind, your mind, our children’s minds, and our collective minds. Stay true. Stay sovereign. Don’t be a victim." p. 285
"I am concerned with a different question, namely what this episode in our history tells us about current attitudes to the state and to personal liberty." p. 288
"At the root of the political problems generated by the pandemic was the public’s attitude to the state and to risk. People have a remarkable degree of confidence in the capacity of the state to contain risk and ward off misfortune." p. 288
"Two things in particular have changed. One is that we now expect more of the state, and are less inclined to accept that there are limits to what it can do. The other is that we are no longer willing to accept risks that have always been inherent in life itself." p. 289
"We have inordinately high expectations of the state. We are less inclined to accept that there are things that it cannot or should not do to protect us." p 290
"For all perils, there must be a governmental solution. If there is none, that implies a lack of governmental competence." p. 290
"Risk-aversion and the fear that goes with it, are a standing invitation to authoritarian government." p. 290
"If we hold governments responsible for everything that goes wrong, they will take away our autonomy so that nothing can go wrong." p. 290
"Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannise, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes. It stupefies a people until each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” p. 291
"Most regulation is designed to limit risk by limiting freedom." p. 291
"Governments do this not in order to protect us from risk, but mainly in order to protect themselves from criticism." p. 291
"People who are sufficiently frightened will submit to an authoritarian regime which offers them security against some real or imagined threat." p. 291
"Most despotisms come into being not because a despot has seized power, but because people willingly surrender their freedoms in return for security." p. 292
"Historically, the response to an epidemic like this would have been a matter for individuals to make their own risk assessments in the light of their own vulnerability and those of the people around them." p. 293
"What was previously a right inherent in a free people, has come to depend on government licence. We have come to regard the right to live normal lives as a gift of the state." p. 294
"All of this was made possible by fear. Throughout history fear has been the principal instrument of the authoritarian state." p. 294
"At least as serious as the implications for our relations with the state are the implications for our relations with each other. The pandemic generated distrust, resentment and mutual hostility among citizens in most countries where lockdowns were imposed." p. 295
"Authoritarian governments fracture the societies in which they operate." p. 295
"Governments rarely relinquish powers that they have once acquired." p. 295
"I see no reason why politicians should want or need to respect basic liberal values, if the public is happy with a more authoritarian style of government." p. 296
"Within the government’s own ranks, it promotes loyalty at the expense of wisdom." p. 297
"A degree of respect for individual autonomy seems to me to be a necessary feature of anything which deserves to be called a democracy." p. 297
"Not everyone can see that our own government did this. Some are blinded by their faith in the benevolence of state authorities." p. 299
"Why did government fail? It did not fail. The administrative state excelled beyond its wildest dreams. The COVID regime has been its pinnacle achievement, at least so far." p. 299
"To defeat COVID collectivism, we must reject the nanny state." p. 299
"Today our oppression comes not from foreign lands but from our own state, which dominates our lives in every conceivable way." p. 300
“The moment public bodies exceed their rights they do so to the injury and oppression of private individuals.” p. 301
"The administrative branch, not the legislature, is now making the bulk of the rules." p. 301
"Courts now defer to public authorities to do as they think best in the 'public interest'." P. 302
"We have the Unholy Trinity of the Administrative State: delegation from the legislature, deference from the courts, and discretion for the administration to decide the public good." p. 302
"State officials don’t have to show that their policies achieved public good, since the meaning of public good is up to them." p. 303
"The nanny state is neither neutral nor benign. It exists to exist. It controls to control." p. 304
"These policies were wrong for the coercion they imposed, not the goals they failed to achieve." p. 305
"The conceit of our functionaries has become intolerable. Most public policy, good or bad, is illegitimate." p. 305
"The general rule should be: people’s lives are their own." p. 305
"The First Amendment also protects Americans’ right to call out government corruption and abuse of power and petition the government for redress of grievances." p. 307
"These protections were stripped away during the COVID-19 pandemic." p. 307
"How could upwards of 75% of the country be persuaded into taking experimental gene therapy injections with no informed consent and zero long-term safety data?" p. 308
"If the U.S. government’s illicit pandemic strategy is not exposed for the betrayal it was, then make no mistake–the same clandestine and totalitarian techniques will be deployed again on unsuspecting Americans." p. 308
"Pfizer’s 5.3.6 ninety-day post marketing experience report, which tracked adverse event data from December 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021, showed its COVID-19 mRNA “vaccine” to be the deadliest drug ever rolled out in U.S. history." p. 308
"On July 30, 2021 American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) began recklessly endorsing COVID-19 vaccination in pregnancy, even though the clinical trials failed to include pregnant women." p. 309
"Convincing pregnant women to take the COVID-19 shots was almost a guarantee that they would become pro-vaccine “trusted messengers” within their own families." p. 310
"The ACOG relinquished independent control over its COVID-19 recommendations for patients to the CDC when it accepted the federal grant money." p. 312
"If this sounds like government capture of ACOG–it is." p. 313
"The targets of the experimental “vaccine” campaign would be society’s most vulnerable–pregnant mothers and their unborn babies." P. 314
"The study led by Thorp found a 57-fold increase in miscarriage, and a 38-fold increase in fetal death (stillbirth) following COVID-19 vaccination when compared to Influenza vaccines." p. 315"The April 2023 batch of Pfizer clinical documents released under court order demonstrate that both Pfizer and FDA knew the mRNA shots caused serious harm to both fetuses and infants–yet CDC pushed the shots anyway." p 316
"How many of the 275 medical and other founding members organizations of the COVID-19 Community Corps perhaps sold their souls–trading free speech, the protections of the First Amendment, bodily autonomy, and informed consent–for money, power or both?" p. 316
"At the heart of the HHS’ vaccine propaganda campaign was exploitation of our trust, built upon age-old marketing tricks–and not anything approaching actual medical 'science.” p. 317
"The government wrongly claiming that, 'paradoxically,' more speech equals more danger and not more safety for society." p. 329
"Twitter and their political friends went further than mere silencing. These smarmy people ultimately hurt, and may have helped to injure and kill, many thousands." p. 331
"I was deplatformed for telling God’s truth." p. 333
"The larger issue is what the experience I underwent, represents for our culture." p. 335
"If we do not reject (and indeed prosecute and legislate against) this unlawful suppression of views at the behest of the government, then we no longer live in an American culture, in which ideas rise and gain currency on the basis of merit and on the basis of ideas’ appeals to others." p. 338
"It was a huge mistake to think that you’re going to be doing a public service by only airing one side of any argument." p. 340
"The press turned into propaganda. And when the press does that, it is extremely dangerous." p. 340
"Challenging the accepted narrative is seen as evil." p. 341
"Nobody’s ever seen anything to this level of censorship and deplatforming except perhaps Dr. Andrew Wakefield, when he pointed out the link between vaccines and autism." p. 341
"Ostracizing dissenters is bad science." p. 342
"The events in Germany between 1933 and 1943 had shown that perfectly intelligent people were, under the pressure of political power and propaganda, rendered stupid—that is, incapable of critical reasoning." p. 345
"We are defenseless against stupidity. Nothing can be done to oppose it, neither with protests nor with violence. Reasons cannot prevail." p. 345
"Never try to convince the stupid with reasons; it’s pointless and dangerous." p. 346
"Stupidity is often not an innate defect, but one that emerges under certain circumstances in which people are made stupid or allow themselves to be made stupid." p. 346
"When talking to him, one feels that one is not dealing with him personally, but with catchphrases, slogans, etc. that have taken possession of him." p. 347
"He is under a spell; he is blinded; he is abused in his own being." p. 347
"It is not an act of instruction, but only an act of liberation that can overcome stupidity." p. 347
"Stupidity is not an expression of the victim’s lack of native intelligence, but of his inability to think when political or religious power is being exerted on his society." p. 347
"Strange, looking back, that we believed we needed an exemption to prevent an illegal action from being perpetrated against us." p. 351
"I was unwilling to violate my Hippocratic Oath or my patients’ rights to choose their medical treatment and protect their privacy rights." p. 357
"I am not angry at you. I feel great sorrow for you. You are caught in the lie, and on the side of darkness. I hope and pray to Our Good Lord that you will come to know the truth, and see the light, so you will no longer be complicit in the injuries and deaths of so many people." p. 359
"The essential dialectic of science is arguing, questioning, debating. Without debate, science is nothing more than propaganda." p. 361
"Science starts with theories, hypotheses, that have examinable empiric ramifications. Nevertheless, those theories are not science; they motivate science." p. 362
"Science is the performance of empirical or observational work to obtain evidence confirming or refuting theories." p. 362
"There is perhaps no bigger plausibility sham today than 'evidence-based medicine'." p. 363
"Censorship is the tool of the undefendable, since valid science inherently defends itself." p. 374
"Political science trumped science." p. 380
"Was it more a pandemic of fear than a pathogen?" p. 380
“This is the greatest hoax perpetrated on an unsuspecting public.” - Dr. Roger Hodkinson - p. 381
"The fact checkers (a.k.a. narrative enforcers)." p. 381
"Who would purposely sabotage people’s chance at recovery, at life?" p. 383
"The Canadian Freedom Convoy was the greatest expression of Canadian patriotism I had ever seen." p. 385-386
"Those who gradually and gleefully sacrifice their freedoms, their autonomy, their individuality, their livelihoods, and their relationships on the altar of the 'common good' have forgotten this is the pattern followed by every totalitarian regime in history." p. 391
"The present ability to curate reality and coerce obedience is unprecedented, far beyond what Orwell envisioned in 1984." p. 392
"The current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history." p. 392
"The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining—despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative. Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic. Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cult like mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent." p. 393
"This ideological mass psychosis is religion—not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth." p. 393
Mark Twain quote applies: “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” p. 393
"This is about demolishing the foundations of a free society and building it back—not better, but better-controlled." p. 396
"Millions would become state agents, sentinels of surveillance, and enforcers of a new totalitarian regime." p. 398
"The truth is the exact inverse of what the state declares." p 399
"The totalitarian regime involves the entire society; it conscripts the population into its very structure." p. 400
“In the post-totalitarian system,” Havel wrote, “this line [of power] runs de facto through each person, for everyone in his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system.” p. 400
"Everyone is forced to 'live within the lie'.” p. 400
"The sign is only a sign of compliance and complicity and not a statement of belief." p. 400
"The question now is whether the fallout from the covid crisis has produced enough dissidents who will no longer comply when a new emergency is declared." p. 402
"No safe and effective coronavirus vaccine had ever been made, despite decades of trying—and the ghastly truth is that none has been made to this day." p. 409
"I attributed the excess deaths to aggressive measures and hospital treatment protocols known to have been applied suddenly at that time in those localities." p. 421
"If there had been no pandemic propaganda or coercion, and governments and the medical establishment had simply gone on with business as usual, then there would not have been any excess mortality." p. 422
"We estimated that the vaccines had killed 13 million worldwide." p. 422
"The USA-led “pandemic response” industry is not a thing. It is most likely fabricated and maintained for ulterior motives, other than saving humanity." p. 423
"In the contemporary era of the dominant human species, humanity is its worst enemy, not nature." p. 424
"In my view, if anything COVID is close to being a bioweapon, it is the military capacity to massively, and repeatedly, rollout individual injections, which are physical vectors for whichever substances the regime wishes to selectively inject into chosen populations, while imposing complete compliance down to one’s own body, under the cover of protecting public health." p. 426
"We must recognize that the vaccines contributed significantly to excess mortality everywhere that they were imposed." p. 428