"I can speak my mind because it's a free world" is a phrase most of us have used at some point in our lives. That world that we considered 'free' is now coming rapidly to an end. We will, I think, regret the great incursions into human life made by the State over the years, incremental incursions that have gathered pace and become deeper and deeper since the creation of the welfare state in the 50s. All of them - without exception - have been presented to us as being 'for our good'.
No matter what you think of Governmental responses to the Coronavirus, responses which the Hierarchy of the Church has parroted like a State-appointed Ministry of Religion, it seems to me that some things can now be universally accepted. Firstly, that for better or worse, the State has accrued extraordinary power over citizens, powers that were always there for the using but now like nuclear warheads on a Soviet parade are brought out into full daylight in shock and awe.
The Spanish Influenza of 1918 |
It is staggering. Unfortunately, because we have been so brainwashed since our earliest youths, there are a number of assumptions being made about the role of government that, if accepted without question, make the situation as it stands now inevitable and unavoidable. The first assumption we make is that:
Public health is the responsibility of the Government (aka the Government will save us!)
We have been groomed to believe that the Government does not simply make policies for public health but is in charge of public health and we have accepted incredibly meekly that in a time of public health crisis, the Government automatically becomes in charge of everything. Public health isn't something that falls out of government influence, but I'm not sure that even in times of pandemic we should accept Government's assurance that we should,
'Stand well back, citizens for we, your beloved Government, will handle this!'
Why do we expect a bureaucratic mega-institution like the UK Government to handle this? Why are we suddenly asked to believe that the UK Government is our salvation?
The truth is that Government does very little for us that is good, and that when it does, there is invariably a catch. I was most grateful when a couple of years ago I poured the contents of a steamer, including the vegetables, over my right foot and an NHS nurse treated it and dressed it. I am full of admiration for those who work days and nights in the service of the sick and injured.
However, the idea that the Government and even its new Golden Calf, the NHS, is a shining beacon of virtue is much overdone and I don't believe the hype. Government can become like that abusive husband who says, 'I love you and from this day forward will cherish you', who provides for his wife but then says, 'But now you're in my house you're not allowed to go outside and you're not allowed any friends.' Did I say 'like that abusive husband'? Sorry, the Government IS that abusive husband.
The NHS oversees countless abortions and has a culture of soft-euthanasia, almost an unwritten code, by starvation, dehydration and painkillers which most of us will not witness until a family member dies. Personally, I wouldn't trust the NHS with an elderly patient on a venitlator, fighting for his or her life. I don't know how endemic it is, but the NHS seems to have a huge problem with preserving the lives of the elderly. In certain circumstances, it is actually very effective at bumping people off. And if the NHS is going to separate family from the elderly person concerned, that is even more worrying, because it is often only family that notice when an NHS hospital is doing something objectively evil to a patient, like starving them or dehydrating them to death which has for years become a routine part of 'end of life' care.
The second assumption we have been groomed to believe is that even if it turns out the Government can't save us:
'Your government cares about you!'
Powers given to government can do many things for good or for bad, but we should all at least accept that the Government does not care about us, whether we as individuals live or die, or find ourselves eating out of bins on the streets. It doesn't care, it cannot care, it does not love, it cannot love. Individual leaders may have enormous capacity to care about the fate of people in general, but as for the apparatus of the State, forget it. Individual doctors or nurses have the capacity to love patients and care for them with dignity, but they don't guide policy, they enforce it, they are not the NHS, the NHS is a bureaucratic machine, cold, heartless, brutal, sterile. Care homes are meant to care for people, but almost everyone I know has had friends or family members in a care home where the 'carers' were inhuman beasts who treated patients with shocking disregard, leaving dirty sheets unchanged, treating them with contempt. Care homes also have that special reputation for bumping patients off before their natural end. It's all so professional!
We currently have radio and TV announcements, even moving images on advertisement boards at bus stops telling us to 'Protect the NHS'. So, we now have the State telling us to protect the State and that protecting the State is the single most important thing we can do with out lives. Nevermind if you, for example, don't have the Coronavirus, but some other deadly or painful condition. You're meant to 'protect the NHS' which you thought was there to protect you and wait it out until Covid-19 patients exist no more, which could be never. And if you're awaiting a hip replacement, or you're a cancer patient, or you can't walk because you've poured the contents of a steamer on your right foot or something, you should still do the decent thing and clap the all-glorious State every Thursday at 8pm. Everyone must clap. Clapping helps the nurses, you see. They live on your applause. It is their oxygen. Thank you, NHS! Alas, because so few people from outside the NHS can get into hospitals to see what is going on, for all we know the State could be executing the elderly left, right and centre and we'd still be clapping the NHS. I trust in the goodness of God that this is not the case, but in all honesty, who knows what is going on in there, other than incredibly creepy hospital staff dancing routines while Death maraudes through hospital corridors and body bags are removed to go to the local crematorium with no autopsy necessary, thank you very much.
As for me, I don't want to live in a country where the State is supreme completely and above the individual and society itself (even in times of emergency). I have no reason to believe that just because we live in a time of pestilence, the British State is benign and 'cares'. Why should I believe that the British State is benign? The British State sends young men to die in futile and pointless wars based on a tissue of lies in the middle East and it never apologises for doing so. The British State approves the killing of 200,000 abortions a year. What's benign, precisely, about that industrial scale of mass murder? It uses aborted children in medical research! How benign! Why should I believe that a Governmental ideology that only a while ago was trumpeting 'gay marriage' as a boon for individual freedom, equality and love, suddenly professes that each and every individual must do his bit to sacrifice their natural freedoms for the sake of the greater good, in a manipulative twist of utilitarian logic that borders on philosophical and legislative schizophrenia?
Don't get me wrong, we, the British people probably thoroughly deserve evil and tyrannical overlords, we have grievously sinned, we have departed from the law of God, we treat our true Saviour with indifference and contempt, we have stained our land with the blood of the unborn, embraced every form of paganism, we live our lives as if God does not exist, but let us not pretend to ourselves that what is being erected in a time of crisis is the fruits of a loving, benevolent Government that always puts its citizens first. There is no reason to think this is the case, no reason at all and the relentless propaganda machine that accompanies this disease only makes me feel more dis-eased with the entire situation.
After 4 weeks of lockdown must we really be told again and again to 'stay 2 metres' apart. You told us, we get it, are we dumb cattle who need telling 50 times a day?! Are you, Government ministers, really concerned that we do this for public health or are you preparing us for a future of dystopic perpetual isolation from each other just to see whether you can exercise that kind of dictatorial power, where natural loving bonds between kith and kin are eradicated? Certain forces at work seem to love 'the new normal', so forgive me if I believe there are some ulterior motives going on here. This leads me to underline another assumption that is dangerous and which is going to be less accepted by the British people:
The measures we, the Government, enforce in response to this pandemic will be for your good! Trust us!
It seems glaringly obvious to me theat, no matter where you stand on the conspiracy theories circulating about this disease, that the long arm of the State is going to ask, then demand, further sacrifices of individuals in our country - most likely, all individuals - that will erode or eliminate forever freedoms we have long since taken for granted. It will doubtless all be done with that cheery British 'wartime spirit' and Boris Johnson, our little Churchill, will lead the charge.
Government, advised by a relatively small group of 'experts', who almost always seem to be working nowadays under some elusive ideological lines, in the pay of certain long-established foundations and elite individuals, will endeavour to eradicate the disease (with our co-operation, of course). In order to return to 'normal life', I dare say we will be mandated to accept some form of vaccination 'for the greater good'. We will be told that clinical trials have guaranteed its safety (but there are always side effects, no medicine is perfect etc, etc.) and we will all be asked to trust that the Government is being totally 100% honest with us that the vaccine will provide us with 'digital immunity' of some kind. Once under the loving embrace of a Government certificate of cleanliness, those who have not accepted the immunisation will be 'unclean', potential disease carriers. Will people who don't entrust their bodies to a Government under the influence of billionaire population controllers such as Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation be entitled to any semblence of 'normal life'? I, for one, doubt it.
And in the name of public health and for 'the greater good', would not greater surveillance and monitoring of society be necessary, to ensure that cities and towns remain as sanitary as they can be? To ensure that all the cattle are behaving as they should behave in times of danger, threat of disease and the snares of pestilence? Shouldn't we all accept the loss of privacy, the loss of freedom, to preserve and care for the vulnerable, you know, for the sake of the greater good?
The technology is there, we have it, so it would be irresponsible not to use it, eh?
Wherever it came from, however it got here, the Great Lie at the heart of this pandemic will be the lie that removes all operation of life as we had hitherto known it.
The Great Lie is that you and I belong to the State when in fact you and I belong to God.
The Great Lie is that the State can be, or is, or ever will be Almighty God, your Protector.
God alone is God.
God alone can be trusted without question with your whole life, your secrets, your fears, your future, your relationships, your life, your death.
I would love to be able trust our Government with these things, but I'm sorry, I don't!
God alone can be trusted without question with your whole life, your secrets, your fears, your future, your relationships, your life, your death.
I would love to be able trust our Government with these things, but I'm sorry, I don't!
Let us turn to God, the true Lord, that He may deliver our land and our people!
Jesus is Lord!
Jesus is Lord!
7 comments:
Another good post, thank you. The trouble is that I so often feel helpless and powerless in the face of our materialistic political leaders, who never seem to give Almighty God the respect and honour that is His due, and without Whom we are but empty shadows. Your views which you regularly express so eloquently and with great respect to Almighty God, are the sort of views that I would like to hear from our Catholic leaders, but as far as I am aware, never do! We all desperately need spiritual solace and encouragement from our leaders, we have a Cardinal and Bishops whose silence, with a few laudable exceptions, on the prevailing moral state of our Country is deafening!! I remember sixty years ago, the weekly Catholic papers were regularly headlined with the outspoken Catholic views of certain Archbishops and Bishops who were prepared to speak out on matters of morality, and their views were taken up in the secular Press. Everybody knew where the Church stood on important moral issues, and politicians were challenged when necessary, to comply. We need strong, knowledgeable, and outspoken Catholic leaders. We have numerous lay leaders who epitomise so much the apostolic work of the saints, but where is the public support from the Hierarchy? Keep up your good work Laurence, perhaps it is time to rally the support of the laity in a renewal of such organisations as the Legion of Mary? I am an old man, but would love to support any national Catholic movement prepared to challenge the lies and inaccuracies concerning the Catholic Church,pedalled by the media. May our Blessed Lady restore England as the Dowry of Mary.
Thank you for this, Bones. I have heard many conspiracy theories since my youth. I sincerely hope you are wrong, but I won't be surprised if you are right. God bless you!
Remember the NHS v the infants Charlie Gard and v Alfie Evans? The human/animal chimeras produced in British laboratories?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2017818/Embryos-involving-genes-animals-mixed-humans-produced-secretively-past-years.html
A well written piece, Lawrence. This present overarching crescendo of evil and moral confusion throughout societies and the world suggests a malevolent preternatural director feverishly attempting to accelerate the performance of the cast before the final curtain drops on the play.
Two things are common with the situation here in Italy.
- rainbow logo with the 'everything's gonna be alright' motto in makeshift signs appearing as the lockdown begins. Coincidence? The symbol recalling the ark to save the selected few from an impending catastrophe upon the many? hmmm.
- elder care units ravaged by covid, police inquiries under way. Apparently they asked the units to host covid patients for lack of space at the hospital, which to ignorant me seems like asking a gas station to host fireworks, and to top it all the nurses had insufficient safety measures.
I understand patients needed a place and nurses, but then you take the elders out first, PLENTY of empty buildings around.
You are flying a lot of kites here, Laurence.
Yes, we have a self-serving establishment, but *a tyranny made only excusable by disease*?
Yes, the state exercises a great deal of power over us. Parents hand over their children to the state, to be educated in state schools, an idea that strikes me as totalitarian. It is no wonder some parents educate their children at home or support faith schools. On the other hand the postwar Education Act helped a lot of children stay on at school, and my generation saw the expansion of higher education; the unfair ll plus was abolished.
*However the idea that the Government and even its new Golden Calf, the NHS, is a shining example of virtue is much overdone and I don't believe the hype.*
This sentence is incoherent.
The NHS was set up by the postwar Labour government; Aneurin Bevan, one of its architects, endured much hatred and derision in the pursuit of his vision. Bevan, a coal miner from South Wales, grew up in poverty, disease, and squalor in a pre-NHS Britain. So did my parents. Financially managing the cost of the NHS is the problem.
You say Government is *an abusive husband*: Because it is enforcing social distancing? Because it wants to save us from Covid-19? From the grim fate of gasping for breath as we die needlessly? Abusive husbands abuse, they do not protect. Not being allowed to sit in pubs, cafes, cinemas and theatres is for our protection, it is not abuse.
Why don't you mention the workers in London Transport who have already died? Or the doctors and nurses dying right now? Or the woman doctor on television, weeping at the deaths she has seen, and what she sees coming?
Why didn't you mention that Queens, New York, with the most sophisticated health care system in the world, is stretched to breaking point?
Why no statistics? No mention of the numbers who die every day? You say nothing about the virologists who make it clear that social distancing will save many lives, and that close social contact will see the pandemic spreading like the Spanish influenza of 1919?
*The NHS is a cold bureaucratic machine, cold, heartless, brutal, sterile.*
Was that the same NHS you relied upon the day you scalded your foot? My sister's life was saved 30 years ago after a tumour in her lower intestines was removed. My father's brother died in his mid-40s from the same kind of tumour; cancer treatment has improved thanks to publicly funded research and the NHS.
*Certain forces at work seem to love the new normal*? It looks to me that these forces are desperate to get everyone back to work, because the economic damage is already enormous.
We will be mandated to accept some sort of vaccine? Yes, as parents are mandated to have their children immunised against measles, a killer, as I was vaccinated as a child against polio, smallpox etc. Thank God for medicine, thank God for the NHS which the Tories have been stealthily privatising.
Is it really slavish to clap on Thursday nights for those people who are putting their lives at risk to ensure that essential services are run? Or is it not just good manners?
The term Welfare State was coined by a bishop in the Church of England, but with Mrs Thatcher the term was demonised. Her goal was to dismantle it and to destroy the working class movement (the trades unions); we are living with the consequences of all that and with the forces of globalism and liberal economics.
We will also be living with the coronavirus threat for at least a year. It may go away only to return this winter or next. The normal we return to will be a new normal. This is the reality of living in a sinful, fallen world.
We can use this crisis to tell people about the Gospel of Jesus Christ; that all of us must die, but that we can die in our sins or die in the Lord; and that Jesus has overcome the world and will return in glory at the end of history, when there will be a new heaven and a new earth; when all tears will be wiped away.
If you will permit me a further point, Laurence.
Laura Ingraham told the Republican National Convention in Cleveland: *I'm a conservative. Right-wing media coverage has been a disaster.*
I agree with Michael Voris, that President Trump's political and media enemies have weaponised coronavirus against him. One shrill columnist wrote, *The Trump administration is praying about Coronavirus - We are all so SCREWED.* Such people hate supernatural Christianity. The British political class consider faith a harmless eccentricity.
On the other hand a mind as lucid and informed as Daniel Dennett's (YouTube) lays much blame on the Trump administration for its mishandling of the crisis. I am trying to keep an open mind even if I incline to the Voris position while respecting Dennett's analysis.
You might want to read online ...
Even on Covid-19, Left and Right Are Divided.
Dennis Prager. (Real Clear Politics)
Conservative Media Still Isn't Sure What To Think About Coronavirus.
Alex Kantrowitz. (BuzzFeed.News)
Coronavirus and Conservatism's Future.
Rod Dreher. American Conservative.
Will *Faith Not Fear* Spread the Coronavirus?
Paula Skye Tallman.
Ms. Tallman is a biocultural anthropologist.
This is a time to listen to doctors, medical care specialists, scientists, statisticians, and academics with expertise in societies in crisis. The situation looks unstable in Italy.
Faith walks with reason and science. *Read the signs of the times,* said Our Blessed Lord.
Martin
I know you have lots of concerns, some of them well founded no doubt, but I'm not sure that the many sweeping assumptions about the motives of the Government (who I'm no fan of) or of the British public, who I don't lump together as one homogeneous mass, fit in with the Catechism's instruction to think the best of people unless you have concrete evidence to the contrary as to their motives. Your approach lacks the love and compassion of Jesus, but seems closer to the harsh and rather juridical view of the Pharisees whose reference point was the letter of the law, not the love and mercy of God. Judge not lest you be judged?
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