The Rising Biosecurity Surveillance Regime

Aaron Kheriaty of the Ethics and Public Policy Center argues Americans have a duty to engage in civil disobedience when confronted with assaults on their liberty under the guise of a medical or other emergency.  He points to how civil liberties have diminished over the past two years under various COVID-19 mandates, and wonders if it’s not part of a larger effort to remake society.  “It turns out that people who are afraid, who are locked down, who are isolated for months behind computer screens are easier to control.  A society grounded on ‘social distancing’ is a contradiction—it is a kind of anti-society.  Paradoxically under the stay-at-home orders, the highest form of civic participation was framed as non-participation.  The specter of asymptomatic viral spread—which never had any scientific basis—turned every fellow citizen into a potential threat to one’s existence. It would be hard to devise a better method to destroy the fabric of society and to divide us.”  Kheriaty worries the growing influence of technology in medicine.  “In this framework, citizens are no longer viewed as persons with inherent dignity, but as fungible elements of an undifferentiated ‘mass,’ to be shaped by supposedly benevolent health and safety experts. I predict that if these trends do not meet more robust resistance in 2022, this new paradigm of governance will demand increasingly intrusive and burdensome interventions into the lives, and bodies, of individuals.”

Read More: EPPC