Government by Hysteria: The Climate and Covid Hobgoblins Begin to Fade
by Tilak Doshi 23 January 2025 9:00 AM
Former President Ronald Reagan famously said that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help”. His point was that Government “help” often leads to worse outcomes for its supposed beneficiaries. Not only have many governments been incredibly inefficient in achieving claimed objectives of helping citizens, but they have often proved to be malicious in intent: the “help” offered has been a cover to stay in power.
Liberal democracies have a limited repertoire of state-sanctioned carrots and sticks, and none of these allow governments to easily trample citizens’ rights enshrined in law such as habeas corpus or the right to trial in a court of law. There are certain norms that apply to government action in modern liberal democracies, and these cannot easily be over-ridden. We call these norms civilised.
Nonetheless, we have witnessed in our lifetimes a new mode of practical politics observed by the great essayist H. L. Mencken. He said, in so many words, that our governments manufacture imaginary hobgoblins – creatures of the mind that can be mischievous, frightening and even dangerous – and then wait for citizens to clamour for safety.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/01/23/government-by-hysteria-the-climate-and-covid-hobgoblins-begin-to-fade/
