The last time I wrote about the larger issues of the culture wars I talked about coercion. Not just coercion by the state — although that looms ever larger these days — but also coercion by employers against employees, by private corporations against their customers and vendors, and by various institutions such as schools and universities against their charges.

My thesis is that the real ideological divide nowadays is between those who want to coerce others to do their will and those who don’t. It’s true that the coercive impulse is more likely to be found on the left than on the right, but the division is not uniform. There are leftists who stick their necks out for libertarian principles, and there are right-wingers who are itching for the chance to force progressives to abandon their utopian efforts.

Coercion came to the fore during the Corona hysteria in 2020. Governments at all levels implemented draconian new restrictions on businesses and citizens. The new measures lacked the force of law, but were pushed through via the ramrod of nebulous “state of emergency” declarations issued by the executive. Businesses and private institutions simultaneously imposed their own rules, ejecting customers who violated social distancing and expelling students who refused to wear face masks.

It soon became clear that certain political leaders reveled in their new authoritarian powers, and enjoyed setting arbitrary rules that ordinary citizens were required to obey. Nurse Ratched types came into their own in hospitals and doctors’ offices all over the country. Ordinary citizens with authoritarian tendencies ordered complete strangers around in stores, restaurants, and other public places. Indignant apartment dwellers snitched out their neighbors to the police for violating lockdown rules. My first encounter with the zealots of the New Normal came when the guy ahead of me in line in Whole Foods screamed at me for not standing far enough away.

Then came the vaccine mandates. A huge number of people were presented with the choice of getting the needle or losing their jobs — or not being able to return to college, or not being able to get an indoor seat in a restaurant. I had to miss out on attending a performance of Beethoven’s Fifth because I was unable to present proof of vaccination.

The situation has eased somewhat in the last year or two, but the stench of coercion still hangs thick in the air. A state of emergency is even now in force in some jurisdictions, and it’s obvious that there are numerous political leaders who would welcome the opportunity to issue new totalitarian ukases if a new emergency were to arise and present them with the opportunity to roll out COVID 2.0.

The world is now divided into liberty-minded people on the one hand, and people who like to coerce — along with their willing subjects — on the other. The latter category is exemplified by those earnest citizens who wear a mask when they are out alone on the sidewalk walking their dog, or driving by themselves in their car.

Liberty-minded types are harder to spot. They don’t wear masks, even when prominent signs are posted reminding them to do it. They ignore social distancing rules. They never wipe down the handles of their shopping carts with sanitary wipes. If they have symptoms or are worried about getting sick, they stay home and drink plenty of fluids, rather than ordering others to behave in a certain way to accommodate their anxieties.

In other words, the only way we can be distinguished is by our failure to obey. That’s not always obvious now that masking is optional, so we tend to fade into the background.

At times like this, when coercion is all but universal, how do we resist?

If we don’t resist, those who coerce us will be emboldened, and impose ever-stricter limits on what we are allowed to do. The Corona Psychosis was just the beginning — it’s been a sort of trial run of authoritarianism, a mild version testing the waters in advance of the more serious totalitarian program that is planned for us.

COVID-19 was the rationale for the test, but the big push will use the “climate” to justify absolute control over every facet of our lives, implementing universal surveillance, digital currency, and artificial intelligence to monitor us and keep us in line. Eating the bugs. Fifteen minute cities. Social credit scores. Facial recognition on every corner, with every lamp post an eavesdropper. And all to Save the Planet.

How in the world we will be able to resist that? Where do we start?

Resistance begins when you say: “I will not comply.” With whatever it is — wearing the mask, eating the bugs, showing your vax pass, climbing into the cattle car.

Each act of resistance is a deliberate decision not to go along with a demand for compliance, however small the required behavior may be. Wearing a mask and staying at home are obvious examples from the COVID madness. New ones, more draconian ones, will undoubtedly arise as the “climate crisis” sets in during the run-up to 2030.

But not all of them will be that clear-cut, and not all of them will be easy. Refusing to drive a car with a “kill switch”, for example, may force you to travel by bicycle or on foot. Refusing to present a vax passport (or whatever the new digital pass is) may keep you from being able to buy groceries. Refusing to use digital currency may keep you from buying anything at all, except on the black market.

Part of “I will not comply” is the acceptance of the consequences of non-compliance. Refusing to pay your taxes, for example, is likely to invite severe consequences. If hundreds of thousands or millions of people do the same thing, enforcement will be dicey, and you may be able to skate by. But if you’re the only person who burns your 1040, and you get caught, you will be made an example of. You have to accept that.

Saying “I will not comply” means not waiting for your elected representatives to pass a law that prevents the government from issuing this or that diktat. It means remembering that your constitutional rights exist, regardless of any blatantly illegitimate state legislation or executive order that attempts to countermand them. As tyranny descends upon the land, your liberty may be taken from you, but not your freedom, which is God-given. Freedom lies between your ears and behind your eyes. Even a rifle butt in the back of the head cannot take it from you.

Non-compliance is a difficult habit to learn. Most of us are polite, and would prefer to go along with whatever civil society expects of us. Saying “I will not comply” goes against the grain, especially when the consequences for doing so are severe.

You’d rather wait for that law to be passed, or for the governor to have a change of heart, but in the meantime you get a kill switch in your car, your kid gets “transitioned” in school, and your credit card won’t let you buy any more meat if you exceed your monthly limit.

Widespread non-compliance is the only way to forestall tyranny. If enough people in enough places say “I will not comply,” then the coercion will fail. There are far more of us, the non-compliant, than there are would-be tyrants.

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