On the 9th of November the Palaszczuk government in Queensland, Australia, announced their plans to reward citizens their freedoms back in return for vaccination compliance. The announcement was obviously received with great anger among citizens who feel as though their leaders are dangling simple freedoms in front of them and presenting the ultimatum of conscience vs freedom as if they weren’t one and the same thing.
Such a decision presents many questions about what kind of society we are creating in our quiet participation. Many complain that we shouldn’t have to fight for our freedom, but the real problem may be that we thought we could keep it for nothing.
Is campaigning for our freedom an idea born from the fear of a discriminate future or has the governmental over-step been born out of our past acquiescence in smaller matters?
A new system of value
The inherent nature of Annastacia Palaszczuk’s decision to only allow freedoms to vaccinated people from December 17 onward is discriminative and unjust to those who have personally decided to abstain from the vaccine for various reasons. The repercussions of this action to the unvaccinated individual is endless but what does this mean for the structure of society and how we now perceive value and priority?
In the words of Dr Chris Perry, the president of the Australian Medical Association, who said in an interview with channel 9 news, those hosting a wedding, pubs and clubs are going to have to “weed out the unvaccinated” and check vaccination status before they allow them into the premises with a follow up warning “otherwise they will go bankrupt”.
Following this order forces businesses to only deliver service to those who roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated. Correct me if I’m wrong but this creates two classes of people in society who are identified by whether or not they had the jab and by which stores and services they are deemed pure enough to use. And the way the government covers this up is with their public relations force field that then puts the blame back onto the unvaccinated for not caring about the greater good of society rendering them second class citizens.
How does this change the way we are governed?
James Macpherson’s ‘shouldn’t freedom be an inalienable right rather than a “reward”?’ article via Spectator, cleverly comments “Listening to Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk today, one could be forgiven for thinking human rights were hers to give, and hers to take away. ”
It seems the Palaszczuk government along with the Andrews government in Victoria have reached a breaking point where their power to enforce has found its limit when the people exercise their power to resist. It seems like more of a misguided effort to establish order and compliance than it is a major health decision and if anything it shows holes in the effectiveness of the government’s vaccination plan.
In an interview with former deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, Dr Jordan Peterson discusses that if you have to mandate, enforce or negatively incentivise people to get a vaccination, then there probably isn’t a good enough reason to be vaccinated.
“To move to use political force or police force to insist is only going to increase the distrust that’s driving the resistance to the vaccines to begin with,” Peterson stated.
Our government has created a precedent for distrust as it seems our state leaders moved past taking health advice for the safety of Australia and instead now use ‘medical advice’ to drive fear and enforcement. It may be that Palaszczuk is avoiding responsibility by handing the weight of political decisions onto the shoulders of experts as Jordan Peterson puts it.
This voidance of responsibility now creates distrust in the medical industry among citizens and creates a blurred line between elected politicians and medical experts. Ultimately our new system of value creates distrust in elected officials for relinquishing responsibility and using political force to justify an overspend on vaccination purchases and secondly it creates a distrust in the medical industry as we now view the health experts as our oppressors.
Our system of value is changing, from unvaccinated to social outcast and from medical expert to politician and from politician to dictator. Some may complain about the need to fight for freedoms, but this loss of freedom has been like a slow boiling frog, we cannot sense the temperature until it’s too hot.
Jesse Moore draws from the Bible and classical literature for insight into life’s tough questions. He is currently studying at university to become a film-maker.
Jesse Moore’s previous articles can be viewed at: https://www.pressserviceinternational.org/jesse-moore.html