Essays in Idleness

“After more than two years of legal wrangling,” I read on the Internet, “Alberta Crown prosecutors intend to ask the court to acquit Pastor James Coates and Grace Life Church of all charges that were laid during the pandemic.” This, because the court recently ruled that the provincial Batflu orders were outside provincial powers, i.e. invalid.

Well, that’s nice, and perhaps we can expect a meaningless apology (eventually), for political behaviour covered in the Nuremberg trials. (For instance, compelling people to take experimental vaccinations against their will.) More than three years of oppression by bureaucrats, policemen, politicians, was just — we will be told — an administrative error. “Me bad.”

I might believe we had rule of law in this country if senior health officials, and all their enablers, were charged and (eventually) gravely punished for what was a compound series of criminal acts, breeching (among other things) freedom of worship. We’ve had much-publicized “truth and reconciliation tribunals.” Surely now we need neo-Nuremberg trials, against our public health bureaucrats.

That their orders were miscalculating, and systematically incompetent, thus killing more than they saved, is beginning to be appreciated; but this has been the story throughout history when governments have asserted their arbitrary powers. It cannot be said in their defence, however.

Instead, those accused of giving them will say: “We were only following orders.”