No Driving on the Weekends?
American Thinker | 19 May, 2024 | Eric Utter

A bad move from a totalitarian-minded leftist leader in Germany is sure to give Joe Biden ideas.

Germany’s transport minister (and progressive politician), Volker Wissing, last month vowed to ban driving on weekends to meet Germany’s climate-related goals. It’s either do that or else he wants the ruling coalition to pass more restrictions within the Climate Protection Act come July.

According to the German newspaper BILD, as cited by Politico, Wissing penned a letter to the coalition’s parliamentary group leaders, in which he bemoaned the fact that the reforms haven’t yet been approved.

Wissing, whose initials are ironically those of Germany’s most famous auto maker told BILD, according to the Politico report that: “This serves neither the climate nor the reputation of the federal government.”

He added that reducing traffic to achieve climate goals would mandate measures such as “comprehensive and indefinite driving bans on Saturdays and Sundays.”

A government telling its citizens that they can’t drive on weekends would seem like a hard sell at best, but then again we obeyed similar — and even more intrusive — measures during the COVID pandemic lockdowns.

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None of it was pretty. Mass propaganda disguised as medical expertise (remember when Joe Biden and his CDC army of Goebbels clones demanded that we wear three or more masks outside?) and mass censorship of social media conversations (because, we were frequently told, disinformation kills!) proved that — when push comes to shove — Western governments will quickly dispense with protections for free speech. Wannabe dictators (intent on protecting “democracy” by being authoritarian) embraced their true “Do as we say!” dispositions and branded the public’s rights and liberties as “enemies of the State.”

Officials summarily punished anyone who resisted COVID’s descending Iron Curtain. Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau seized the bank accounts and property titles of Freedom Convoy protesters. Videos from Australia and New Zealand showing police forces blocking roads, securing quarantine camps, and pushing citizens back into their homes looked like scenes from a Mad Max movie. California Democrats buried skateparks in sand, cordoned off jungle-gyms with yellow crime tape, and arrested lone surfers paddling in the ocean. Abandoning moderation and constitutional constraints, Western totalitarians embraced intimidation, coercion, and surveillance on a wide scale.

Throughout the West, governments prohibited places of worship from conducting religious services, recorded license plate numbers of congregants, and issued excessive fines to clergy.

— “Lessons from COVID Totalitarianism”
American Thinker | 19 May, 2024 | J.B. Shurk