On behalf of fellow liberal establishmentarians, Emily Oster barks that they should be granted amnesty for the misery and destruction they inflicted in the name of Covid, on the grounds that they did not know any better. Not everybody is in a mood to forgive:

First, no, you don’t get to advocate policies that do extraordinary harm to others, against their wishes, then say, “We didn’t know any better at the time!” Ignorance doesn’t work as an excuse when the policies involved abrogating your fellow citizens’ rights under an indefinite state of emergency, while censoring and cancelling those who weren’t as ignorant.

Actually, they were not as ignorant as they pretend. There was plenty of evidence indicating that lockdowns and other mandates were not effective.

[T]he ultimate problem, from a legal perspective, with Oster’s call for “amnesty” for the advocacy of totalitarian policies during Covid [is] the implicit assumption that all those who advocated lockdowns, mandates, censorship and an indefinite state of emergency, all the way up the chain of command, did so in good faith. If those who advocated these policies are simply presumed to have done so out of well-meaning ignorance, then any inquiry into the many outstanding questions as to the origin of these policies – and the underlying motivations of highest-level officials who promulgated them – is foreclosed.

Forgiveness is usually a good policy where we find the three R’s of Remorse, Repair, and not Repeating the action. But here it seems progressives are only trying to escape the consequences of their behavior. There is no reason to believe they would not do the same or worse in the future, next time in the name of some other bugaboo, possibly the imaginary climate crisis.

Matt Walsh is in no mood to forgive:

Neither is Kari Lake; no wonder they fear her:

Most important is not to forget. The liberal establishment squandered the last of its credibility on Covid and now must rebuild it from scratch before being trusted with power.

On tips from ABC of the ANC and Jester.

Joe Biden let slip that the pandemic is over. Nonetheless, Covid tyranny continues:

There is no mask mandate in North Carolina, yet when Harnett County resident Gregory Hahn reported to the courthouse in Lillington this week without a mask for jury duty and refused to wear one, he was sentenced to 24 hours in the county jail with no bail for contempt of court.

There are no signs saying masks are required in the courthouse. But a March 2022 joint order from Harnett and Lee County officials (the two counties that comprise this judicial district) grants individual judges or the Clerk of Superior Court or the District Attorney the right to require them in their courtrooms or personal offices.

However,

[N]othing in the joint order says residents can be thrown in jail if they decline to wear one.

Typically, Superior Court Judge C. Winston Gilchrist was not wearing a mask himself as he sent Hahn off to jail in handcuffs. The single father’s request to call his child was denied.

All-powerful government of the type that has been congealing is characterized by arbitrary tyranny on scales both large and small. As the Founding Fathers understood, whatever power is granted to government will be abused.

On tips from R F and Varla.

The Authorities told us we had to submit to a dangerous vaccine to stop the spread of Covid. If it were only our own health at stake, then maybe the liberal motto “My body my choice” (babies’ bodies don’t count) would apply. But no; the vaccine mandates that cost many people their jobs were imposed explicitly to stop the spread.

Now we know not only that the vaccine did not stop the spread, but that it was never even tested to see if it would:

After Covid, how can we ever trust these people again? How can we allow them to hold power over us?

On tips from Jack Bauer.

Leftist technocrats like Anthony Fauci and leftist propaganda organs like Reuters may use words to lie, but the words themselves do not lie, as Rand Paul reminded us yesterday while also reminding us that The Science did not always mandate that people should be compelled to take insufficiently tested vaccines for diseases that they have already had:

Among the many reasons that Democrats must be driven from power is that when that happens, Fauci can be held accountable for lies that constituted felonies.

On a tip from Occam’s Stubble.