We have discussed the deracination of the State from the Nation and the consequences thereof, which are the end of governance by consent and the death of the citizen’s loyalty. When governance by consent has been sacrificed on some foreign altar, the State will, to ensure its power, its survival and the living standards of its minions and officers, fall back upon force. Regulations will multiply and will become ever more detailed and prescriptive. This in turn raises the cost of compliance to insupportable levels thus making avoidance and evasion inevitable. The citizen’s evasive measures will prompt amendment and clarification and further regulation and so on in the familiar dreary cycle of every administrative State since Babylon. As we are a fallen race, I offer no prospect that the constant low level hostilities between citizen and state will ever vanish. On the contrary, hostilities will continue and occasionally there will be blood in the streets as the State is brought to heel, only to start the cycle over again.

Many misguided Christians and those who use Christian rhetoric when it suits their purposes are fond of reminding us that St. Paul taught that we owe obedience to civil authority and that Christ himself commanded that we should “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”. As is usual, this is no more than poor rhetoric that ignores both intent and context. The context of Romans 13:1-7 makes it clear that Paul was talking only about obedience to legitimate authority legitimately exercised. Likewise, while the text of Matthew 22:15-22 tells us to render unto Caesar what is his, the context and setting make it clear that we are not required to give Caesar whatever he asks for, but only what is legimately his. We owe nothing-neither material goods, loyalty nor obedience to illegimate authorities or to authority illegitmately exercised.

We are, at least in New Zealand, still very far from any kind of blood in the streets moment while our American brethern are on the threshold of it and seem dtermined to cross over. Yet the dead hand of the State even here continues to confiscate ever more resources, to carry out ever more intrusive information collection and surveillance, and to demand ever more public demonstrations of fealty to the various political fantasies of globalism. Under cover of spurious emergencies like climate change or viral outbreaks, the State crushes the citizen’s livelihood, restricts his movements, imprisons without trial the innocent and the recalcitrant, and even denies the right to individual bodily integrity by mandating tests, treatment and vaccination. In this, the agents of the state are encouraged by international quangoes, financed by Croesus-like oligarchs, given cover by a compliant and cowardly media and supported by compromised and idelogically slanted experts. What then is the citizen to do? Under these circumstances it is not merely the right, but also the sacred duty of the citizen to resist.

Who are you going to believe, the bureaucrat or your lying eyes?

The first form of resistance is education of the self, the construction of personal intellectual walls against the manipulation and outright lies used to foment fear, induce panic, force isolation of us one from another, muzzle our ability to communicate, and worst of all, deprive us of our ability to make a dignified living. The simple act of calmly observing the world around you and exercising the innate critical faculties given to every human being will free you of this particular set of chains and set you on the path to effective resistance. Once you see the truth, you will not be able to unsee it and you will feel compelled to show it to others.

Climate change and covid are perfect examples. For 50 years. climatic disaster has been imminent. We are always 5 years away from the irreversible destruction of the planet. It not only never happens, but anyone with eyes can see that there is no sign whatsoever of any such thing. Anyone who stayed awake in middle school science class knows that the entire idea fails at the very first hurdle of science: it isn’t a falsifiable theory, i.e. there is no conceivable experiment which would prove the theory false. It can and should be disregarded and ridiculed.

Yet here we are. Indian peasants must abandon diesel powered irrigation pumps and manually peddle pump water for hours in a sweltering rice paddy, commuters must huddle together on mass transit or peddle a bike through the rain, tropical countries must forego air conditioning, the middle class must stop eating meat and going on holidays abroad and everyone must pay more for food, freeze in the dark and use filthy jute sacks for their shopping. Most damning of the narrative of doom is the private behaviour of the politicians lording their petty power over us. While burdening the poor and making everyone else’s life more expensive and less convenient, the experts and politicians fly around alone in private jets, commute by helicopter, own multiple large homes and drive luxury vehicles. They do not act like all humanity is facing extinction from climate change because they themselves demonstrably do not believe it is true.

The covid virus is indeed a pandemic, a pandemic of exaggeration, mendacity, scaremongering, money grubbing, corruption and tyranny. We have been told repeatedly by experts, by politiicans and by the media that this is a uniquely deadly disease requiring the surrender of dignity, bodily integrity, liberty and livelihood. Yet when we look around us anywhere except on a television screen there is no evidence this is true. No one is dropping dead in the street, hospitals are not overwhelmed, ICUs globally are at barely more than usual utilisation for the time, and untold millions have recovered without even knowing that they were infected. Hastily constructed overflow hospitals have gone unused. In the UK, 30,000 NHS retired NHS workers placed on emergency standby still await their call to service. Do you remember the stacks of bodies and mass graves in Africa, Bangladesh and Mexico? No, neither do I. Because there aren’t any.

I repeat, most damning of the narrative of doom is the private behaviour of the politicians lording their petty power over us. While forcing citizens to cower in their homes, forego travel, wear a rag on their face, isolate from their friends and family, close their businesses and inject an untested vaccine, politicians and experts dine at expensive restaurants with friends, invite their elderly relatives for family gatherings, slither out for sex with their mistress, go mountain biking, travel to vacation homes in the Hamptons, Cabo San Lucas or St. Barts, attend sports gatherings and chinwag unmasked with constituents. They do not act like the world is existentially threatened by a fast moving and deadly virus because they themselves demonstrably do not believe it is true.

Caesar stripped bare. Look and compare. Question and share.

Believe what you see. This is Caesar stripped naked and these are Caesar’s baldfaced lies. When you are told by politiicans, experts and the media that you must surrender liberty or property, it is your duty as a citizen to compare what you have been told with what you can perceive with your own senses. Test what you are told is true against your own lived daily experience. Finally, always look closely at those telling you that there is an existential crisis or emergency requiring immediate action and extraodinary sacrifice. Does their own behaviour indicate that they believe it is true? Do they expose themselves, their friends and loved ones to what they’ve just told you is a deadly disease? Do they continue to jet off to Europe when they’ve told you that the planet will perish in flames unless you stop driving your car? These simple tests are something everyone with eyes and ears can do.

When you have done that, encourage those around you to do the same. When your neighbour or your cousin is living in fear of human contact or is freezing in the dark to save the planet because some expert or official has told them they must, ask them the questions that I have just asked you. Ask them–gently, because the resulting congnitive dissonance can be disturbing–if what they are doing comports with the objective reality they experience every day. Human beings are alethotropic, we have an innate bias toward the truth. If we each and all plant a few seeds of the truth, we stand a chance of rolling back the trend toward oppression and misery.

Happy New Year to you all.