2020-07-19

What Beccaria Teaches Us About Society And Law In The Age Of Covid-19

The perception of how you view liberty and how government handles the pandemic depends on how much of a threat Covid- 19 is. This will determine how far you're willing to let the government manage your health.

If you think and have concluded it is a scourge that threatens you, then you will accept government intrusion and thus accept coercive power to compel people to follow what you believe. This can be pernicious when, as Quebec is doing, mixing virtue with nationalism. This a toxic mix. I need not remind what period in history where this kind of commitment led a certain country.

I'm not comparing Germany to Quebec. I'm warning against the thinking than can lead to a totalitarian state. At the moment, Canadians are at the mercy of Premiers and at the moment Quebec is by far the worst offender.

If you think the Covid-19 is not a threat (and even consider it a hysteria), you will not accept government mandating rules. You will accept government recommendations but nothing more.

Both sides claim science supports them. But in what side does the body of evidence fall? I argue it's with the latter. There is little or no evidence lockdowns and masks work. At least not for what they cost: Namely curtailing of civil liberties and far worse on a social and economic scale. This we can measure and literature will keep flowing on this for some time.

It is my belief this will go down as one of the great miscalculations in history. The only thing left to witness and determine is just exactly what the damage will be.

And the costs inflicted will be significant. The average pro-mask wearer simply can't see things in high-resolution and to be able to calculate trade-offs. They just see one-dimensional data points out of context and without perspective. 'All people dying' = any means necessary to save them = All will be well and I am virtuous.

I've never realized how many compassionate people live among me.

 On discussing virtue is a good time to bring in the great criminologist and philosopher Cesare Beccaria. 

"...a philosophical eye will see the changes which have always occurred over the centuries in the words vice and virtue; good citizen and bad, not as a result in the changes in circumstances and so in the common interest, but as the result of the passions and false beliefs...."

The zeitgeist is emotional. One may contend, in the context of Covid-19,  the circumstances have changed but the data is showing this not to be the case. We chose to create the circumstances and conditions that have lead to how we react to it. IE lockdowns. Covid-19 didn't destroy the economy, our decisions to deal with the pandemic did.

But the narrative suggests the opposite. If Covid-19 is in the driver seat, then the good citizen must do battle and submit to  the government.

Emotionally driven virtue impacts the degree of their compassion is correlated to their politics. If you hate guns, all gun shootings will take you to Twitter. But the flu kills way more people every year but that has no faux-virtuous currency. 'Another 12 dead from the flu! We must do something!' Won't get you much traction, hence little virtue-signalling cred and for the more opportunistic money in the form of donations.

Car accidents kill 1.35 million ever year on the planet. No one seems to mind.

On being compared to Hobbes despite common agreement he differed on the issue of personal liberty.

"...he (Beccaria) was far from believing that we sacrificed all our liberty to the Leviathan in return for protection it offered us'. On the contrary, he contended that we give up only the smallest portion of our liberty i.e. the portion necessary for us to enjoy the remaining part in peace and tranquility...."

'On Crime and punishments and other writings'. Edited by Richard Bellamy.

The timeless issue of individual rights v. the collective safety is inescapable.

Beccaria believe crime came from free will. As opposed to his contemporary Lombroso who believe a person was predisposed to crime based on their genetics and physiology and that crime through free will was not possible. As such, he can be seen as a forefather of forensic profiling.

Quebec is essentially a collectivist place that pays lip service to liberty. Early in the pandemic, when asked by the media who were pushing for masks mandates (objectively of course. I am sure they all diligently studied the literature on it), he said we were a free society.

Until he decided we weren't. But how he concluded the pandemic threatened us was not explained. It was just 'it was' and 'do this'. No detailed discussion on the data or on what literature they based the mask rule. He claims to be open and transparent but that he refuses to do so tells another story.

With Francois Legault here we have the classic snake oil salesman.

His slimy double-speak and appeals to emotion and authority should send a chill down the spine of all Quebecers. Instead, it's only a restricted few that observe this characteristic of his politics.

What did Beccaria conclude?

Essentially, if a measure didn't bring the maximum happiness shared among the greater number than it was, for a lack of a better term, invalid.

He put it this way: "The greatest sum of pleasures, divided equally among the greatest number of people".

Obviously, the mask mandate doesn't qualify. It sags the spirit of the mind. Unilateral decrees such as Quebec's rooted in security (through a misapplication of the precautionary principle) can never bring happiness to the greatest number.

If you line up the people do you think you get happiness with this decree?

By 'pleasure' we don't mean having fun dinking beer by the pool. This is defined in terms of overall mental health.

Montesquieu was still more blunt: Every punishment which is not  derived from absolute necessity is tyrannous.

Arruda didn't appreciate being called Stalinist but that's precisely what these measures are rooted in.

The collective before the individual. It's not a complicated calculus. It's just that Arruda and Legault have deceived themselves into thinking theirs is a just decision for the health of all. Where they didn't consider the unintended consequences of their actions regarding the lockdown (where for the first time in world history we quarantined the healthy), they had a chance to rectify this with a mask mandate and chose instead to make the same error.

If they could be given a pass for not being responsible for the economic and social malaise it wrought because 'the virus was new' and 'everyone was doing it', what to make of the foreseeable, I contend, consequences widespread mask mandates will unleash on the population? If this leads to higher spikes (as it did in places like New Mexico and California. In Tennessee the state didn't mandate it and cases remained steady and declining but one city in the state did mandate masks and saw a rise in cases), how will they react? Chances are, they will not connect it to the mandates and may become even more drastic in their desperate objective to....well, quiet frankly the only objective I see is Legault looking to change habits. He's Denethor. He no longer leads. He lets the virus lead.

People who cheer this on think themselves ahead but their so far behind they're actually behind. They just don't realize the people they think they're in front of lapped them a couple of time. These are the people Legault preys on. And we 'uncooperative' people are dragged into their superstitious caves.

It is next to a near impossible task to believe wearing a mask under duress and a threat of a fine can accomplish this. But Legault defies this beautiful and simple dictum by nefariously mangling it into 'mask is liberty'. In fact, it descends into cynicism once politicians don't follow their own protocols which is a common occurrence and already happened with Legault. Arruda, not above his own propaganda shticks, was photographed with I reckon are family members and friends without a  mask. He was outside which is normal but if his goal was to have the other people do the pimping of 'leading by example' it failed spectacularly.

This is the double-speak mentioned earlier. War is peace, Ignorance is strength (popular among the woke). Slavery is freedom. This being Legault's favourite flavour.

His Ministry of Truth is run by Dr. Arruda.

And still more distressing this Ministry of Truth is thriving thanks, in part, to the complicity of the media who have been astonishingly silent. What more proof of 'enemies of the people' do we need? Every article I read rarely - if ever- consults the gigantic army of experts who don't agree at all with what's happening. We always seem to get doctors (who are not epidemiologist and tend to over state masks because they accept the 'suppression' strategy) and the odd virologist who don't seem to ever understand the wider constitutional issue at play here.

To save all deaths through the barrel of a gun seems to be the only aim.

Moreover, another distressing problem, it's not like we have an honourable Federal government (filled with scandals and sleaze so deep it breached the rule of law in the SNC-Lavalin case. Quebec, Ontario, and Canada are natural fits) at the moment that we can 'turn its lonely eyes to.' Its ideological stance in the last five years make clear it's more likely to behave in this manner rather than support the civll liberties of individuals.

Where have you gone Joe Di Maggio? for real!

Arruda was detailed in explaining why the masks don't work a few weeks ago, but less forthright when he forced it and even using totalitarian language of threatening the people through the use of force ludicrously acting like a thug at a press conference warning he can be a 'bad boy'.

These two men (and Doug Ford has been equally as poor) are a travesty and a direct threat to our democratic institutions and I'm almost certain Arruda is knowingly lying to the people. No way he doesn't understand the consequences of this measure since we have clips of him saying as much.

Again. As I keep asking. What happened to reverse course?

It must be hard for Noble prize winning scientists and renowned virologists to have to be subjected to ignorant rules from men like Francois Legault. Could you imagine how they must feel putting on a mask? The inner swearing must devastating. That's where we stand on the 2020 timeline.

Regardless, the case that a political decision should never come into conflict with natural law is one we need to consider in the time of Covid-19.

For if we off-load more of our civil liberties (part of our hard earned and fought 'pleasures'), we're just about done with the grand, glorious and gigantic experiment in human liberty in the West.

In my eyes, this batch of politicians and public health officials (save for some bright spots like Sweden, Tennessee, and South Dakota) have been so incompetent they've allowed for despotic rule to take over.

The whole lot of them are rotten for they're not considering liberty as a key and just virtue  that can bring the maximum pleasure and thus legitimacy to a populace. A majority of people may agree (the false virtuous and fence sitters) but there's a sizeable portion that doesn't not agree and this is unjust.

Bimbos and pimps. That's what they are. They don't even have the honor to step aside and resign or the humility to admit 'I don't know'.

******

I mentioned the strategy of 'suppression' to contain Covid-19. There seems to be an 'open-ended' mind set to governments applying this strategy. The precautionary principle good in theory be indefinite.

There's a problem with suppression. Their term. Not mine.

It explodes.

During the towering apex of philosophical genius in the West up until the mid 20th century - it seems to have precipitously tapered off significantly since then), ideas flowered in a free flow of exchange. When something is not suppressed, human greatness flourishes.

When you suppress ideas and freedom of thought and expression (ie censorship which is gathering steam at an alarming rate these days), the human mind retrenches and closes.

I reckon it's the same principle at play only in a scientific setting. There must be a term equivalent to this in the sciences.

Right now, people are retrenching. Part because of fear, but I'm sure there are still a significant portion of North Americans adjusting but under an internal-duress that can't be good for the collective soul of a nation.

A suppressed nation is a depressed one.

*****

All this to say. Now I sit alone in my office without my mask. But prepared to put it on at the ready.

Stupid times, for stupid people, run by stupid people.







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