It started with masks. We were told that we were not wearing masks to protect ourselves, we were wearing masks to protect others. That never made sense to me. If my mask prevents me from exhaling of the Covid virus to other people, then it is only logical that my mask would prevent me inhaling the virus from others. If masks work, then wearing a mask protects the wearer, and whether other people wear a mask should be immaterial to me. But they never conceded that point because doing so would mean that we are responsible for ourselves, and our own self-interests.
They, then, took this same faulty logic, and applied it to the vaccines. We were told that we are not getting vaccinated to protect ourselves, we are getting vaccinated to protect everyone else. Again, that never made sense. If the vaccines work, then it should not matter if other people are not vaccinated. The vaccine should protect vaccinated from contracting the virus even in the presence of unvaccinated people. But our leaders are guilting the unvaccinated to give up their individual sovereignty and comply with vaccine mandates on the grounds that they are doing so to protect others. So, the unvaccinated have to get vaccinated not to protect themselves but to protect the already vaccinated. It is illogical to its core.
But this is not about public health, it is designed to engrain into our psyches the belief that we are not responsible for our own well-being, that we are responsible for everyone else’s well-being, and everyone else is responsible for our well-being. We are required to wear masks and get vaccinated for other people, not ourselves. And if we push back against these mandates on the grounds of personal autonomy and individual sovereignty, we are labeled as “selfish”, and bullied into compliance. Certain politicians and activist have even been advocating creating a two-tiered society where the unvaccinated are made to be second class citizens, stripped of their rights, and even isolated from society.
Adam Smith, the father of modern free market economics, whose theories have helped to usher in unprecedented prosperity to America and to the world, believed that economic systems are most productive and prosperous when individuals are working in their own self-interest. He wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.” Everyone working in their own self-interest benefits everyone else because it is the motivating force from which all the goods and services everyone needs to live are created.
Essentially, we are not responsible for fulfilling other people’s or other families’ needs, and no one else is responsible for taking care us or our families’ needs, but everyone working to care for themselves and their families, taking individual responsibility to put food on their families table, a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs creates the economic conditions that benefits everyone in society. We can and should help others who may be struggling through voluntary charity, but that charity should never be forced, bullied or mandated by the government. This is the cornerstone of free market capitalism, and the driving force behind America’s great prosperity.
Marxists and the far-left have been attacking this economic system for centuries on the grounds that it is selfish and exploits the poor, even though the record of history shows that free market capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than every other economic system combined. Marxists believe that individuals should not work for their own self-interests; they must sublimate their needs and desires for the good of others; and we are to work for others, not ourselves, put other people’s self-interest ahead of our own, for the greater good, not our own good. Marxists believe that individuals working for their own self-interests are selfish, but people who rely on others to take care of them are not. It’s a complete backward thinking.
This is the same illogical feel-good flawed ideology they have been pedaling when it comes to masks and vaccines. Instead of being responsible for our own health, we must be responsible for everyone else’s health. So, these mask and vaccine mandates, and the virtue bullying that accompany them, are all a precursor to the real ideological shift which is their real goal. The masks are the way Marxist are smuggling in their indoctrination of the socialist mentality through our culture, to change the ethos of America away from individual autonomy and personal responsibility which had been the backbone of American culture and responsible for our prosperity, to subservience to the government and collective responsibility which are the foundation of Marxism. They hope that this shift in our collective psyche will eventually usher in a socialist or even a communist revolution to America.
It is a very short step from the government taking away our rights and individual sovereignty by mandating masks and vaccines on the grounds that we must act in others self-interests over our own, to the government taking away our paychecks, and spreading the money we work for to others on the grounds that we must act in others self-interests over our own. And if we push back and demand that we should be able to personally benefit from the fruits of our own labor, we will be labeled “selfish”, and guilted into compliance by the virtue signalers just as those who push back on vaccine mandates on the grounds of individual autonomy are. If the government can mandate what we wear over our mouths, or what medicine we put in our bodies, then it can easily commandeer the money we earn from our bodily labor, and in doing so impose on us a Marxist system that history has shown only benefits the ruling class.
Whether the intent of these Marxists who are trying to change the American way of life is magnanimous or nefarious is irrelevant, the results of this change is and will always be the same, disastrous and deadly for everyone except the ruling class. And yet here we are battling to save the most prosperous and uplifting economic system the world has ever known, free market capitalism, from being replaced by one of the most oppressive and deadly economic systems, Marxism. And the fact that we are even having this battle means that we may have already lost the war.
Judd Garrett is a graduate from Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.