Where Do We Draw the Line?
The line between free speech and prohibited speech is being redrawn almost daily. What will it do to us as a society?
An analysis of the Swedish response to COVID exposes the folly and damage done by authoritarian governments worldwide.
It wasn’t so long ago that Sweden was an international pariah.
According to the experts, the politicians and the media, the Swedish government was effectively killing their people for refusing to follow the COVID ‘science’.
Libertarian think tank The Cato Institute has published a paper examining the impact of the Swedish approach against other countries.
The findings are a damning indictment of the coercive and corrupt policies and practices masquerading as science.
Here’s what the Cato paper found.
Sweden stood out from other countries, stubbornly refusing lockdowns, school closures, and mask mandates...
Sweden’s economy got through the pandemic better than comparable countries, and elementary school students have not suffered learning losses. These benefits do not seem to have come at the expense of human health. Remarkably, total excess deaths were smaller in Sweden than in any other European country during the three pandemic years (2020–2022), and the rate was less than half of America’s.
According to the paper, the Swedes adopted a path of personal responsibility and voluntary compliance with government recommendations on social distancing, working remotely, avoiding non-essential travel, and staying indoors if they felt sick.
At the time, then-Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said:
“We will never be able to legislate about everything. We will never be able to ban all harmful behaviour. Now, it is actually more a matter of common sense. There is an individual responsibility, and every individual has to take responsibility for themselves, for their fellow people and their country.”
How refreshing it is to hear words like that from any world leader.
Of course, Löfven’s government was roundly condemned for their liberty-loving approach by the clueless and complicit authoritarian leaders in the Western world.
Actually, I’m not sure all of them were clueless.
The decision to curtail freedom and suspend time-honoured rights in favour of a confected crisis had to start somewhere.
At this point, all roads seem to lead to the World Economic Forum inspired Dr Anthony Fauci, who repeatedly lied about the pandemic, the protocols, the mortality and the vaccines.
The clueless ones worldwide didn’t ask any questions and just followed along - Australia included.
The Swedish approach wasn’t entirely self-directed individualism, however.
People like me would still insist they overreacted to what is now considered a flu-like virus, but compared to other countries, they were a positive outlier.
The Swedes focused on protecting the most vulnerable while not trampling all over the individual self-determination and personal responsibility that have been the hallmarks of Western civilisation.
That our political representatives have strayed so far from that path - and that so many citizens willingly accepted the authoritarian state says a lot about our country.
It’s now fascinating to hear so many with a public voice proclaim to have always been against vaccine mandates and coercive COVID measures.
In many cases, I recall them condemning Sweden, the unvaccinated and the uncooperative as dangers to humanity.
Now, they want us to forget.
Incredibly, I know that many will forget. But to me, the failure of those in positions of public prominence to speak truth to power in the face of such overwhelming evidence of misuse of science and political authority is unforgivable.
While some may choose to forgive, we should never forget or trust those who were part of history's most significant public policy deception.
Join 50K+ readers of the no spin Weekly Dose of Common Sense email. It's FREE and published every Wednesday since 2009