Originally published at: https://peakprosperity.com/which-side-are-you-on/
Covid really broke things. Not the disease itself, that was mostly a nothing burger with a 99.95% overall infection fatality rate (IFR), but rather the over-playing of hands by the pharma companies and federal and state public health bureaucracies.
Now that RFK Jr is in there, he’s stuck precisely to his message all the way along, much to his credit. He’s said, perhaps a thousand times by now, that he intends to let science gather real data (such as running vaccines against true inert placebos) and then let people make up their own minds from a position of improved informed consent.
To any rational person, this is hardly a controversial stance. It just makes sense, and it’s morally defensible.
So how do we begin to make sense of the screeching, emotionally charged outbursts from so many of DC’s leadership this past week during RFK Jr’s hearings?
I mean, it was a full-blown panic attack. You could feel the contempt, hatred, fear, and loathing from so many elected officials. Frankly, it was hard to watch it all.
Thankfully, Jeff Childers’ amazing September 4th Coffee & Covid missive set the stage for framing the antics in a way that it all snapped into place for me.
What we’re really seeing is a clash between incompatible worldviews. On the one side, you have the “utilitarians” who believe in doing things “for the greater good,” while on the other side, you have people who believe in individual rights.
More bluntly, one side believes that “the government’s rights supersede individual rights,” and the other side doesn’t believe that their rights are granted to them by the government.
One side believes it has not only the right but the obligation to tell you everything about how to live your life, from how much carbon you should consume, how your children are raised, what goes into your body, and whether to not your life should be sacrificed so that a slightly larger number of other people may live.
As with all truly moral issues, there’s no middle ground. There’s no way to parse the divide so that both sides can live with the compromise. Either you believe that you have the right to own slaves, or you believe that slave owning is morally repugnant. Either you think that torturing children for sexual pleasure is okay, or you do not. There’s no way of parsing the middle ground.
Which brings us to the main point of all this: we’re in a moral and spiritual battle. Either “our side” shows up or we lose by default. The vaccine fetishists are merely the vanguard for those who believe that they have the right, and obligation (as the smarter, superior people, of course) to run your life, and make every decision for you, right up to when and why you should die.
Tim Kaine of Virginia puts their side’s position quite bluntly:
“The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes. It’s a theocratic regime that bases its rule on Sharia law and targets Sunnis, Bahá’ís, Jews, Christians and other religious… pic.twitter.com/XcrPHbVplp
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) September 4, 2025
The other side believes that freedom begets prosperity. That each of us has inalienable rights. That those rights simply exist and do not come from The State. That how we conduct our lives is between each of us and our creator.
In other words, one side has no belief in a higher authority, and the other side does.
Again, there’s no real way to parse that middle ground for a reasonable compromise. Plan accordingly.
In part II of this Scouting Report, I dive deeper into the ugly roots of the CDC and Fabian Society, making the case that both can be perfectly well understood from their beginnings. The past is indeed prologue.
The bottom line is that any faith you put in the bulk of Western leadership is misplaced. Their aims and your happiness have nothing to do with one another.
