The Covid era cut through traditional ideological paradigms like knives on tissue. Nothing behaved as we might have expected. The civil libertarians were nowhere in sight. The courts did not work. Big business and media fully cooperated. The major religions caved. The national security state thrived, while both parties let it all happen. The population was mercilessly propagandized and pillaged with no resistance from the commanding heights.

Seemingly out of nowhere, pharmaceutical companies revealed themselves as more powerful than any industrial monopoly in human history, capable of shutting down the entire world in order to panic people into consuming their product.

As for the old distinctions between the public and private sectors, they melted away. The state did not save us from large corporations and the top layers in commercial society did not save us from the state. They worked together to strangle the liberty of everyone else. Which was the hand and which was the glove was unclear throughout. As for the politicians, they were almost entirely useless, fearful only to save their own lives and careers, shovel money to their constituents, and otherwise hide under their sofas.

For the entire period, the protections we all assumed were there for our rights and liberties vanished, to be replaced by surveillance, censorship, mandates, subsidies, penalties, subterfuge, duplicity, deception, fake science, and nonstop psyops from agencies, media, influencers, medical associations, and screaming hacks from all corners. They recruited gendarmes from within the population to demand compliance and demonize non-compliance. Yes, it was Orwell come to life.

On the other hand, it was a learning experience. It sets up those who care about freedom to reframe the argument and re-understand both the threats and the answers in a different way than before, one that is more realistic. The powers that be showed their hand, revealed their goals, and tested out their dystopian plans. The schemes are still with us but at least we know now what they are and what we might do about them.

With some benefit of hindsight, and lessons learned from having lived through this, here is a suggested reframing of a pro-freedom outlook and agenda. …

Step one: recognize the problem and methods. Step two: say no. …

The technocrats know the value of dividing the population by ideology and proposing themselves as the solution. Let’s get the machines to take the place of people! It’s already happening in vast areas of our lives. When the doctor sees you, he stares at the screen, not you. At the airport, you cannot find an employee with decision-making power. AI answers on the Internet have already taken the place of human-written content.

Step one: recognize the problem and methods. Step two: say no.

**Freedom Means Unmediated Experiences **

Tom Harrington is the author of The Treason of the Experts. He frames the problem and solution slightly differently. He says that the tyrants of our times seek to end unmediated human relationships: the family dinner table, physical meetings, a person reading a physical book, a newspaper, attendance at a play, human-created music, handmade crafts, plant-based medicines, raw and whole food, the wisdom of lived experience, and old-fashioned intuition.

All of this has to go, to be replaced by mediated experiences scripted by large institutions both public and private. This way, we are all dependent. Our lives can be turned on and off depending on the will of our masters. If that outlook sounds paranoid to you, even crazy, you have not been paying attention. This is precisely where we are headed.

Are we aware? And what are we going to do about it? The future of freedom itself hangs in the balance. Old ideological categories and systems are not of much use anymore. As we approach the semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, we need to rethink the very foundations of freedom, its threats, and what we are going to do in response.