Covid Camps & a Closed Society

by Joshua Jongema

Freedom of movement is a natural right that is written in our Constitution in Article 4, and it has been upheld by our courts for hundreds of years. During the coronavirus state of emergency, federal and state governments have shamefully and ironically declared that they need the power to protect their citizens, by taking their rights away from them. Government should be reminded that the only protection it should offer, is from manageable emergencies, and otherwise, its own overreach and abuse of power.

There is simply no way for a government to protect anyone, except through the use of force against them or someone else. To initiate force against people who have not first used force is a violation of the Non-Aggression Principle, which is adapted from Utilitarianism’s Harm Principle.

Utilitarianism is the basis of law and justice. John Stuart Mill wrote in his essay Utilitarianism, that humans are ends in and of themselves, and that to use humans as a means to an end, is unethical.

The term ‘Open Society’ was coined in 1932 by Henry Bergson, who defined it as one which has respect for everyone’s beliefs. A Closed Society then, is one with a closed system of law, morality, or religion. Today, society has become very closed through the state and federal governments’ insistence that your beliefs are no longer important, and that the truth will be given to you on your television set; that all you have to do is accept it, to be free.

Smedley Butler was famous for his book and 1935 speech, “war is a racket.” He spoke of a Protection Racket, which is defined as a way for gangs of powerful people to prey upon groups of vulnerable people. These gangs of criminals do this by manufacturing or spreading fear about a purported threat to the vulnerable population, or by promising not to harm them, but usually both. In the 80’s and 90’s crime was that threat. In the post 2001-era, ideological terrorism has been that threat, and as that threat is perceived to have died down or changed, a new threat has emerged- mouth breathing humans. Early last year, governments initiated lockdowns on common citizens, with the exception of those who were deemed ‘essential’ to society. All humans are essential to society, and so this was a great threat and slap in the face to anyone suddenly shut out from every aspect of life they previously enjoyed. State governments eventually allowed people to leave their homes, but many began systems of Hotel Quarantines.

This involved turning private property into a state-controlled business, which is inherently communistic. The way that common citizens have been treated is immoral and unethical, and illegal it seems, but the way migrants have been treated is far worse. The way we treat those outside our borders, will become the way we treat those inside as well. Migrants are not inherently a threat. Some individual migrants may be a threat, but they’d be easily dealt with by a vigilant and armed populace should they decide to commit a crime.

Migrants are not covid-carriers anymore than the nice old lady at the grocery store. There has been a large increase in migration from Haiti this year, due to natural disasters, as well as governmental and gang oppression that has increased there. If you haven’t heard, the leader of Haiti was assassinated recently. Yet when they and others risk their lives to come to the place that promised them freedom, both the Trump and the Biden administration have been happy to use their emergency Title 42 powers to expel these people without allowing them to make a claim of asylum. Those who do get processed through the border are now being characterized as ‘illegals’, despite at least most of them having finally made it through the border legally. And it gets much worse.

Texas is now running quarantine facilities, and rounding up new immigrants to hold them there without due process. Simultaneously, the Afghan withdrawal has led to the federal government building these facilities to hold Afghani people. Some of them are on military bases. So just like that, without most people so much as noticing, our government has rapidly shifted to using military bases to keep humans in camps, that have barbed wire around them, in the name of fighting a virus.

Governments cannot control a virus through the initiation of force against humans. The fact that they claim to be able to do so, is an indicator of their deception. The only way to solve this government-cause crisis is to allow people to make their own choices. To echo the words of Jacob Hornberger, the only way to solve the crisis at our borders is to enact an open borders policy.