The opinion poll comes several months after another survey carried out by the same institute revealed that 31% of Germans believe they are living in a “sham democracy” where citizens “have no say.”
Without the safeguards of law, freedom would be no blessing. Our societies would be Hobbesian in the true sense: liberty would give way to nightmarish anarchy.
The picking of the apple in Eden was not a proper use of freedom but the contrary—an action that submitted reason and will to a higher power that does not have mankind’s best interest in mind.
The modern media environment is less and less informing and entertaining, and more and more ‘re-educating.’ It wants us to question and then reject the instincts which have served us well for millennia. It wants us to doubt our own eyes and ears.
There are other domains of human life that I believe are best viewed as commons, as emergent, critical societal assets prone to careless destruction by unsustainable use, less tangible than pasture land, but in many ways, much more important in our daily lives.
Less than half a year after its introduction in February, the Austrian government has announced that the mandatory COVID vaccination will soon be a thing of the past. The opposition calls people to remain watchful though.
A moral question lingers for both Americans and Europeans, 30 years after the Ruby Ridge incident: do we as citizens have the right to isolate ourselves and effectively secede from the rest of society? If we try to do so, does the government have the right to intervene and force us back under its jurisdiction?
If a new framework for freedom is to emerge in the West, it must be recognizable. The stories of anchored freedom must be told, and they must be disseminated with the same adamance in mass culture, whenever and wherever possible, as the Boomer myth of freedom.
Whether it is the threat of being canceled or anxious concerns that we’ll lose out in the meritocratic race for success, we’re more and more enslaved and less and less free. We’ve lost sight of the true sources of freedom, which come not from permission but from commitment.
