One of my colleagues, a medical doctor, that I often “tour” with on what many refer to as the “freedom” circuit, texted me a meme a while ago that I just love. Well, to be honest, I actually despise it because of what it symbolizes, which is the tremendous struggles we’ve endured the past four and a half years to get our voices heard by the masses. But part of me likes the meme because it completely embodies what life was like in 2020 for those of us who were speaking out almost from the moment the government said, “Lockdown! Just for 2 weeks to flatten the curve.”
Whilst my doctor (MD and PhD), academic, and economist colleagues were trying to warn people about the negative medical, mental, and economic consequences of locking down perfectly healthy people throughout the world for months on end, personally, I was shouting from the rooftops peering through my legal lens saying, “The government cannot do this, folks! Wake up!” But nobody was listening to me back then. Nobody was listening to any of us. And we didn’t know one another at that point. Nor did we know how to find one another, or even if each other existed at all! The censorship was so thick, you could cut it with a knife. (I’m not exactly sure that thickness has lessened any these past few years. It’s disputable, indeed, but that’s a story for another day).
Once my bold, vocal colleagues and I finally found each other through the fog of censorship, we shared our eerily similar stories about how mainstream media was boycotting us, our work and our “against the narrative” public speeches, and how Big Tech was silencing each and every one of us online. Facebook was sending us “warnings” for posting “misinformation” (whatever that means, because of course I challenged them constantly and asked who they thought they were to determine what was truth and what wasn’t – they responded to none of my challenges, since they clearly had no leg to stand on).
Then there was their blatantly obvious shadowbanning us to the point where I’d post something and they’d only let 14 people see it. In the early days, I had a YouTube channel, but they tore down my videos within an hour or two of posting, and they threw me in YouTube jail so many times, I lost count. Some of my colleagues had tens of thousands of YouTube or Twitter followers, and then poof! One day they lost them all because the overlords cancelled their accounts.
Despite the ever-thickening wall of censorship, we continued speaking out – trying to get the masses to hear logic. “No! The government cannot lock you down for months on end when you are perfectly healthy. It defies our laws, our Constitution, and basic logic.” Yet, we all were facing resistance that was truly unbelievable. Still do today, to a large extent. (Note, I have only about 6,000 followers on Twitter). I personally kept hearing about how, “Jacobson allows the government to control us when there is a health emergency.” I heard a lot of Jacobson this and Jacobson that. My response? Put Jacobson to rest, people. It does not give the government (Trump’s, Biden’s or anyone else’s) the power to lock us down indefinitely.
I stand by that still today. For anyone unaware of what “Jacobson” is, it was a 1905 US Supreme Court case called Jacobson v. Massachusetts, and it has been wildly twisted and distorted beyond belief during the years of the Covid pandemic. In almost all of my speeches over these past few years, I have tried to emphasize the fact that the Constitution does not have an emergency exemption. In other words, the Constitution is not invalid during times of emergency. In fact, it is during times of emergency that we need our Constitution most urgently, as that is the time when government will most likely overstep its bounds and violate our rights and freedoms (in the name of “public safety” of course).
If you think about it, it was during a time of great turmoil that our Constitution was first written, and it was specifically composed to keep the government in check – not to keep We The People in check! I have written a couple of articles about this crucial fact, which you can find here and here.
Okay, so this is the meme my colleague sent me that captures well how we felt four years ago…
Click HERE to read the full article on the Brownstone Institute.