The Mandate Precedent
“Mandates are the way to avoid further restrictions, or having to be restricted, as Canadians get vaccinated.”
-Justin Trudeau
The difficulty is two-fold:
1) The mandate has only increased for the past two years, and has shown no signs of slowing. That is because the first one was simply a precedent for the suspension of rights at the whim of authoritarian fiat. It’s obviously a kind of joke at this point to say it, but the initial idea was ‘two weeks to flatten the curve,’ and now it’s clear that the lockdowns will go as long and as far as “they” deem necessary. Then it was the masks, ‘But we won’t mandate vaccines.’ Then it was ‘Just get the vaccine and all the mandates will be lifted.’ And now it’s ‘Three jabs and all the boosters are required for full vaccination,’ and there’s no telling what it will be tomorrow. And we’ve only talked about the pandemic; we haven’t touched on any other hot-ticket item on which executive orders are constantly issued, and around which legislative storms are constantly raging. But our point is simply this: there is no indication that the mandate precedent is anything less than precisely that—namely, a precedent that has set a new standard going forward.
2) Along those same lines, in the words of Thomas Sowell, ‘The principles on which these things are built take on a life of their own.’ Justin Trudeau says that mandates are the way to avoid more mandates. In reality, however, the mandate has simply established the principle that any and all rights may be suspended at the whim of authoritarian fiat for any and every reason. And all you have to do is look at China, Russia, and every authoritarian regime throughout history to see that there is an infinite supply of good reasons to suspend rights and issue mandates ad infinitum for the public good.
And let’s please take ourselves out from under the notion that this is about mitigating untold numbers of human deaths. No one would be scoffing at masks or distancing if in fact that was the case. In fact, there would be no mandates to scoff at. If this pandemic were ebola, the entire world would be willingly, wholeheartedly working in unison to stop the spread by any and all available means. If COVID-19 had even a 5% or even a 3% mortality rate—and particularly if that rate were indiscriminate, which the current virus clearly is not—many, many millions more would be rushing to get the vaccine and would be far less concerned about the real risks involved, however low they might be.
In other words, the actual circumstances of the virus don’t warrant the irrationality which has been the response. More than that—contrary to what Mr. Trudeau affirms—the response has had essentially no meaningful impact on the virus.
So no, Mr. Trudeau, mandates are not the way to avoid more mandates. They are actually one thing and one thing only: precedent-setters for the suspension of any and all rights at the whim of authoritarian fiat, for any and every reason. And how do we know that? Because the mandate has set a precedent that has opened the door for a string of the same for two solid years now.
Here’s something else the mandate has done: it has served as an appetizer for the ruling class, giving them a taste for more and more laws (read “mandates”) that criminalize dissent from Approved Doctrine & The State-Sanctioned Take on Anything.
Feb. 14th update: It’s been a few days since I wrote the above article. I currently live in northern Arizona and went to the Grand Canyon today with my wife and kids. Upon entering the park (which is federal, not state), there was a sign on the window at the toll booth that read: “Wearing a face mask is required in buildings, on shuttle buses, and in certain areas regardless of vaccination status.” Now, this is obviously not Canada, but it’s illustrative of the same dynamic of which we’ve been critical above. Western leaders began saying almost a year ago that mandates are the way to avoid more mandates. The reality, however, is that mandates have only set a precedent for the suspension of law (or the fiat creation and imposition of it) for any good or arbitrary reason, and the principle has now taken on a life of its own.