The Fallacy of "the Greater Good"

Using "the social contract' to coerce

Chesterton observed that the modern world is insane. Not so much because it admits the abnormal, but because it can’t recover the normal. 

We’re now at a point where normality not only appears incapable of being recovered; most people don’t even seem to remember what it was. The sane remnant are considered rebellious when they defend the Founding Fathers or insist men can’t get pregnant. But that such innocuous acts now seem brazen shows the extent to which normalcy has been lost.

It’s been said that when the whole world is running toward a cliff, he who is running the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind. But it’s those who’ve kept their wits who run the other way.

FDR wasn’t right about much, but he had a point about fear. Fear, as the saying has it, is often a liar. So it’s appropriate that politicians and the corporate press often foment it. In the public realm, fear is frequently fabricated by these master craftsmen in high places of low repute.

The last few years and for various reasons, reasonable, rational, and pragmatic people have been shorn of their senses and scared out of their wits. We know many of them, and love some. They are generally smart, considerate, compassionate, and well-educated (perhaps too well). 

Yet people of good sense and sound mind will often yield both in the face of fear. And they have. They’ve allowed themselves to be scammed by colossal mediocrities in major media, elected office, and appointed positions. They’ve been hoodwinked by hot air in empty suits, swindled by oatmeal in thin skin. 

But too many of them blame not the grifters who pulled a fast one, but the wise marks who dodged the con, and didn’t fall for the ruse. Rather than rise up against the oppressive warden, they turn on the more perceptive inmates.

That makes a degree of sense. No one likes to admit he’s been had, or to feel like he was less perceptive than those who weren’t. The virus debacle and vaccine fiasco were emblematic of this natural tendency. 

Jefferson said famously that not every difference of opinion is a difference in principle. Yet these days, for more and more people, it is. Increasingly, Americans seem to be living in different worlds, and separate realities. 

Bridges seem incapable of being built, much less crossed. On one side are people who wish to be left alone. On the other are those who refuse to let them be. 

And, like the war on “terror” before and that on “climate” underway, “the virus” was an ideal foe for our irrepressible meddlers to instill fear, provoke panic, and accrue power. It represented a deadly, invisible adversary that’s not going anywhere. 

It’s a perfect excuse to wage an endless war that must ever be fought, but can never be won. And the purported “enemy”…as with terrorism, poverty, or the weather…couldn’t care less. It’ll be here regardless, doing what it does no matter what we do. 

As with the ostensible fight against those nebulous adversaries, the real “wars” are waged against those they’re ostensibly launched to protect. Many victims are unaware they’re the targets. They keep joining the ranks and following their orders, oblivious they’re on a kamikaze mission. 

No matter how many mindless government directives, idiotic corporate mandates, or incomprehensible bureaucratic pronouncements come whisking across their radar, they stay locked on auto-pilot, maintaining full-speed as they spin toward impact. Even after several years of this lunacy, they refuse to pull up.

For the hysterics of the covid cult, abiding lockdowns, wearing masks, or injecting “vaccines” was like receiving sacraments, or taking an oath. Declining, for whatever reason, was akin to sedition.

To the high priests, those who refused were considered anathema. And any traitor, infected or not, was treated like vile vermin, and excluded from society in ways that held harrowing historical precedent. 

There’s nothing to say they won’t do this again. The last couple months came word of a new “pneumonia” from China. This time the panic-peddlers wised up, making sure to emphasize it targeted kids. Fortunately, few are buying it.

Not that we won’t continue being sold. From some of the usual suspects in Congress came calls to restrict travel from China. So far, they’ve gone nowhere. But an election year is upon us, and we know what happens when fevers run high.

Remember when people knew infectious diseases were a fact of life and not a moral failing? That the world was full of threats, and that we risked encountering them whenever we walked out the door (or even if we refused to open it)? That germs were among these threats, and that being infected by them was no one’s “fault”? That mitigating these bugs was an individual or family responsibility, to be managed in ways best suited to each person’s medical situation, value scales, risk profile, and philosophic outlook?

But like the Communists last century and the Revolutionaries a century before, our “public health” commissars invoked an abstract “common good” as a way to extol “collective benefits” to suppress individual rights. And, now as then, ersatz “science” was the pillow pressed to freedom’s face.

As with “We’re All In This Together”, “The Greater Good” is an anesthetizing euphemism that makes people think their rightful liberty is a threat to everybody’s freedom. Everyone must be “safe” before anyone can be free. 

But a genuine greater good can only be revealed thru an aggregation of voluntary individual action. To the extent personal preferences are forcibly thwarted, the greater good is by definition diminished.

Our rights are inherent. They’re not subject to democratic debate, to the whims of popular vote, or the vicissitudes of political weather.

Yet the template remains, and its tactics are replicable. We recently read about a county in upstate New York using the “pandemic” playbook to keep “non-essential” workers from roaming around during inclement winter weather (which can be a way of life in upstate New York).

A “travel exemption portal” would categorize workers to determine who would be allowed to commute to work when the snow’s too heavy. And those fortunate enough to be permitted outside would risk having their “privilege” revoked on a regular basis.

With their electronic weapons and digital currencies, our authoritarian ranchers have more effective lassos to corral the cattle. Before the cows know it, they’ll all be in the chute…on the way to the abattoir “for the sake of the herd.”

The only refuge may be new pastures, or another farm. For the sheep to be saved, they must become their own shepherd.

They should know the promise of “safety” disguises a salvation of shears. To be free, they must craft their own staff, and find their own flock. And assure it avoids the prevailing stampede.