2024 – objectives for liberty

Another year begins, and with it another assessment of the standing of human liberty, especially in America. This year is obviously the do-or-die year: the Presidential Election of 2024. The enemies of liberty know its importance; hence their efforts to disqualify President Donald J. Trump from reelection. But beyond that, CNAV has identified three more objectives that those who value their liberty must capture. If we do not, then we lose our liberties – for these objectives are the source of most of the attacks against ourselves, including our lives, liberty and property.

Objectives begin with January 6

The January 6 Event began the most serious attacks – the ones resulting in wrongful arrests and imprisonments. Thankfully, a key January 6 case has already gone to the Supreme Court. Fischer v. United States, Docket No. 23-5572 (December 13, 2023). Joseph W. Fischer stands convicted of obstructing a Congressional proceeding, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1512. So do many of his co-defendants. The particulars of his case seem very badly flawed. (For example, he gained entry into the Capitol after Congress had already recessed. What proceeding, then, was under way for him to obstruct?) But the “question presented” in that case is: does that statute apply when no criminal investigation, nor the gathering or preservation of evidence, was active or happening at the time?

That question is directly relevant to one of Donald Trump’s cases – and to many others. If the Supreme Court rules in Fischer’s favor, this could empty out a few cellblocks and open the door to many wrongful-conviction or false-imprisonment lawsuits. That, in addition to destroying at least half of one of Trump’s cases.

Evidence that could exonerate everyone

This morning, the site Open Ink released an hour-long video, J6: A True Timeline. It contains information directly relevant to any January 6 prosecution. Its producer: A. J. Fischer, who might or might not be a relative of Joe Fischer. He heads an organization called Investigate J6 and also faces January 6 related charges. Nearly four months ago he shared a “less lethal timeline” with UncoverDC. It covers many allegations CNAV has covered before, including:

1. Removal of “snow fencing” that was allegedly supposed to demarcate a restricted area, and
2. The firing of rubber bullets at the heads of those who were still protesting peaceably.

The first part constitutes entrapment; the second, provocation. Not only that, but the rubber bullets and other weapons could have been lethal, besides being provocative. Furthermore, at least one U.S. House member is tracking reports of two “ghost buses” that delivered people to Union Station, with instructions to blend into the crowd.

All this to say: authorities have deliberately misled the public. Of course, many Biden supporters likely welcomed the misleading versions of events. Perhaps they know instinctively – but will never admit – that they need a story to justify their “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and it is always better to quote others. The worst tendency of die-hard leftist rank-and-file, apart from special pleading, is offering, and standing by, hearsay evidence.

Election interference

Attempting to bar President Trump from the ballot is the most insultingly direct form of election interference. This has come, thus far, from Colorado and Maine. Last night, Victor Davis Hansen dropped a long-form post on X in protest.

Hansen warned that Republicans could retaliate just as easily:

We can see where the ultimate trajectory of this usurpation is going—once a single official decides to remove the leading primary and general election candidate of the opposition from the ballot by fiat. Tit-for-tat will likely follow and would unwind the republic.

This morning Jim Hoft at The Gateway Pundit called on Hansen to admit that Republicans haven’t retaliated in the past. This despite far more extensive and obvious provocation. For evidence, Hoft cited, among other things:

• Spying on Trump and his family by FBI and Justice Department operatives – with no accountability.
• Divisions of election in seven States abruptly suspending their ballot counts during the Election of 2020. They then produced hundreds of thousands of votes for Biden. This resulted in the infamous “stairstep curve” of votes for Biden, against a smooth curve for Trump.
• The denial by the Supreme Court to take up the case of Texas v. Pennsylvania.
• Locking out Republican accredited challengers during the count in several major cities.
• The Atlanta Suitcase Scandal. Here the real scandal is in scanning ballots more than once.

The real problem in Georgia is that its election system has been corrupt since long before the Election of 2020. And this corruption is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Georgia voters have their own set of problems. But their solution – and the likely solution nationwide – lies in voting on paper, and counting the paper ballots.

Highest of the objectives: the concept of public health

But by far the most important of the objectives – the one that probably set up the other two – is the very concept of “public health.” Yesterday afternoon, Jack Davis at The Western Journal covered an obscure interview that took place between Francis Collins, M.D., former Director of the National Institutes of Health, and activist “Wilk” Wilkinson.

Dr. Collins was the nominal superior of Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID). In this role Dr. Fauci behaved as if he were Capo di tutti i capi di stato maggiore di tutti gli ospedali americani. (Translation: Chief of All Chiefs of Staff of American Hospitals.) More to the point, Fauci recommended lockdown as the strategy to combat the 2019 Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19). But this summer, Dr. Collins confessed that lockdowns were a mistake. And how did the medical establishment come to make that mistake? By “putting public health bureaucrats in charge,” to quote Davis paraphrasing Collins.

The most important confession: the public-health bureaucrats were thinking only of preventing large numbers of death in a city. Cities concentrate people, and, in theory, viruses can spread like wildfire – or fire in any building.

So you attach infinite value to stopping the disease and saving a life. You attach zero value to whether this actually totally disrupts people’s lives, ruins the economy, and has many kids kept out of school in a way that they never quite recover from. So, yeah, collateral damage.

No meat wagons

Add to it that never did COVID-19 produce the kind of nightmare scenario Dr. Collins said he and his colleagues sought to prevent. This did not happen even in the big cities. Does anyone remember seeing “meat wagons” rolling slowly down residential streets or apartment-complex or “Project” driveways? Does anyone remember voices on bullhorns blaring, “Brrrrinnnng ouuuuttt you’re deadddddd!”? Of course we don’t remember that – because no such thing ever happened. But for at least two years, beginning with the year of the election, we heard, “Either lock down, or see the meat wagons! Your choice!”

Yes, like Chief Justice John Roberts angrily pointing toward a conference-room window everyone knew overlooked First Avenue Southeast, though it was probably draped, and haranguing his colleagues: “If you want to see riots on that street, take this Texas case! If not, not! Simple as!” And we know what Justice Clarence Thomas wistfully said in reply: “Then that’s the end of democracy, John.”

But what we didn’t hear was Justice Samuel A. Alito saying, “Let it be riots, then! John, you’re asking us to lay aside our judicial robes and pretend to be a Commission of Public Safety doing something expedient. We are the Morality Corps of our society, and our mission is justice, not expediency!” Sadly, Justice Alito didn’t say that at a critical moment – though he said something like it in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, more than a year later.

How to prevent a recurrence

Jack Davis quoted plenty of others who had a few choice words for Dr. Collins. Jay Bhattacharya (incidentally a named plaintiff in Missouri v. Biden) offered this:

The Wall Street Journal’s editors reminded everyone of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for a targeted response, sheltering the elderly and most vulnerable while letting society go on. This is how the Swedes weathered what everyone said was a storm, but was no more than a fresh breeze. And Rich Lowry at The National Review reminded everyone that Dr. Collins is saying now what would have gotten people punished two years earlier.

Not too long ago, anyone who said that epidemiologists might be overly focused on disease prevention to the exclusion of other concerns — you know, like jobs, mental health, and schooling — were dismissed as reckless nihilists who didn’t care if their fellow citizens died en masse.

In short, the bullies conjured up visions of the meat wagons – and yet never did any meat wagons roll.

But in truth only one thing can stop this from happening again. And that is to encourage every individual to fortify himself against infection – and stop assuming that no defense other than lockdowns will suffice against any new pathogen. In fact, as free people we need to prepare to take our chances even with a recurrence of Yersinia pestis. (And “fortification” does not include artificial active acquired immunity – vaccination. It means encouraging the development of a robust immune system that can handle any challenge.)

In short, the very concept of “public health” is now suspect. It has become yet another excuse to curtail human liberty.

Positive objectives – encourage self-reliance and individual strength

Not all objectives in the war to reclaim liberty must be – or even can be – negative. The positive objectives all concern building up one’s own strength. In the context of criminality (and, to a lesser extent, foreign attack), this leads to the recognition of self-defense. That includes recognizing the right to keep and bear arms, and encouraging individuals to keep and bear arms. And to use them responsibly.

But now we see another context: the public-health context, in this case involving infectious disease. Some diseases we can defeat through responsible practices involving direct – especially intimate – contact. Others we have defeated before through cleanliness, applied on either an individual scale or a grand scale. For a handful of others, individuals can fortify their immune systems, through several ways, all easy to discover. (And again: this does not include vaccination. Tellingly, 231 current and former service members want to see some courts-martial over forced vaccination in the military.)

Why are these positive objectives important? Because the same architects of January 6, election interference, and the COVID-19 “public health” debacle, rely on people being weak. They prefer a population of wimps. Wimps cannot be free in any case; their “wimpiness” is their chain. Psychological chains can also exist – and are the excuse for censorship.

So the achievement of these objectives for freedom amount to a New Year’s Resolution for Liberty:

I resolve to strengthen and harden myself as a target, whether of criminals, invaders, infectious agents, or the puerile barbs of my fellow dwellers on this Earth.