Communist China spreads a pestilence across the world.

Everywhere people muzzle themselves as they are ordered to.

China rules. Free enterprise retreats. Small business fails. Totalitarianism is the flavor of the year.

Are we losing the idea that liberty is the highest value? Is individual self-determination to be lost not only in practice but even as an ideal?

Peter Hitchens writes this about what’s happening in Britain, but the picture of the submissive population applies equally to America:

This Government has no great authority. It is a Cabinet of undistinguished, inexperienced unknowns, headed by an exhausted and empty Prime Minister whose sparkle, such as it was, is fast fading.

In a few weeks’ time, the Government faces the onset of what may be the worst economic crisis since 1929. It needs to keep the fear levels up to maintain its authority.

One way of doing this is the ceaseless promotion of an alleged “second wave” of Covid, for which there is no evidence.

Another is to undertake a ferocious testing policy. This is now happening in Leicester where testers go from door to door to discover people who are ‘infected’ with Covid, even if they have no symptoms (which is usually the case) and are perfectly healthy. Then they can raise the alarm and close down the city.

But muzzling the populace is even better. People such as I, who think Ministers’ response to the virus is wildly out of proportion, have until now been able to live amid the propaganda, trying to stay sane.

But the muzzle is a badge of subservience and submission. Anyone who dons it publicly is agreeing to the Government’s crazy assessment of the level of danger.

Societies in which citizens are discouraged from speaking out against the regime, as this has become, are pretty disgraceful. But countries where the citizens are compelled to endorse the opinion of the state are a serious step further down the path to totalitarianism.

It is even worse than that.

Look at the muzzled multitudes, their wide eyes peering out anxiously from above the hideous gag which obscures half their faces and turns them from normal human beings into mouthless, obedient submissives. The psychological effect of these garments, on those who wear them, is huge.

And it also has another nasty result for society as a whole.

Dissenters, who prefer not to muzzle themselves, are made to stand out from the surrendered majority, who then become quite keen on pressuring the non-conformists to do as they are told, and on informing against them.

I predicted the same outcome during the House Arrest period in April, and was mocked for it, but it came true.

When all this began, I felt fear. But it was not fear of the disease, which was clearly overstated from the start.

It was fear of exactly what is happening to us, the final closing down of centuries of human liberty and the transformation of one of the freest countries on Earth into a regimented, conformist society, under perpetual surveillance, in which a subservient people scurries about beneath the stern gaze of authority.

It is my view that, if you don that muzzle, you are giving your assent to that change.

(Our thanks to Cogito for bringing the article to our attention)