Or: How I Learned to Stop Resisting and Love the Great Reset
Originally published by The Pop Can in August, 2021
Vaccine passports are everywhere being introduced to ensure that people attending concerts, sporting events, synagogues, churches, mosques, and grocery stores, or seeking to travel interprovincially, internationally, and really, anywhere outside of their homes, have been fully vaccinated. Not only is it moral to demand that people vaccinate and thereafter routinely open up their private medical histories to strangers at work and in public, it is just. Every citizen has a duty to accommodate the needs of those around them—to make them feel safe. After all, social justice and safety go hand in hand. Now, others may not actually be safe, but the feeling of safety trumps any and all liberty, be it freedom of conscience, religion, mobility, expression, association, etc. But on this, we all already agree.
Notwithstanding the growing resistance to these life-saving passports, we must continue to do everything we can in hopes of preventing or at the very least mitigating the spread of COVID-19, especially since only 98%+ of those infected survive. But thinking ahead, doing everything within these particular parameters simply won't be enough.
COVID is not the first threat to our collective wellbeing, and it certainly will not be the last. For this reason, we should reevaluate the application and scope of these death-defying passports, and consider what other dangers we can develop a herd immunity to and altogether subdue.
Since safety is paramount, we should review what threatens Canadian lives most. At the top of everyone’s list of safety concerns: white supremacy, then: criminality (i.e. that not resultant of systemic inequities); toxic masculinity; hateful thinking (e.g. orthodox Christianity, claims of natural rights, anti-abortion sentiments, demands for small government, etc.); and other dangerous and transmissible viruses, such as HIV.
Like my fellow citizens in Quebec, Manitoba, and British Columbia, I envision a Canada wherein an individual can provide stamped paperwork to an employer, an airline, or a barista, indicating that they have been certified as having been immunized against the aforementioned diseases of the body and the mind.
What will it mean, for instance, to have a Liberation Passport (LP) indicating you are immunized against white supremacy? I am sure that we can all agree that Critical Race Theory ought to be taught in every Canadian school, starting as early as kindergarten. This brilliant educational approach to history, science, literature, mathematics, and teaching in general—which reinterprets and revises facts so that they're fit for modern consumption—is a perfect identitarian vaccine for our disunified and wayward nation. Students who matriculate through our education system would receive a stamp on their Liberation Passport indicating they have been immunized against antiquated and contradictory modes of thought. Call it a 'free-thinker' stamp. Adults would be required to attend seminars in order to receive CRT diplomas or other such certifications in order to receive the same stamp on their LP. Those obstinate geriatrics and deplorables amongst the population who’d refuse such a certification will obviously be denied the stamp. Accordingly, those businesses and organizations afraid of seeing bigots walk through their doors would know in advance whether they should permit or deny entry.
Just as we should all endeavor to make Canada one giant safe space, both at the molecular level and at the level of discourse, it would be prudent also to ensure that every citizen’s passport reflects their civility and or past criminality. If, for instance, one of those malevolent traders on Bay Street has invested in a firm with low ESG (environmental, social, & governance) or a poor DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) rating, their sins against humanity ought to be noted. (While ESG and DEI both deserve their own stamps, we could simplify the passports somewhat by amalgamating the immunities indicated under a ‘Hate Has No Home Here’ stamp.)
We all know how violent Western culture has made the average cisgender male. It doesn’t take a sleuth to recognize that most violent crimes are caused by straight men. Ergo, it would be prudent to have the Liberation Passport indicate a given citizen’s average testosterone levels—just so there are no surprises. Consider the risk posed to Canadians attending a slam poetry festival or a drum circle in the event that an unpapered “red-blooded male" is skulking about. Without the LP, microphones might be dropping for all the wrong reasons. A good balance will result in a 'cis-pended' stamp. Similarly, former abusers would provide valid proof of rehabilitation to acquire a 'nonviolence' stamp.
Imagine, if you will, the tough decision an employer faces when they learn that a potential candidate for a prime position is Catholic. On the one hand, that candidate could be an open-minded apostate like Justin Trudeau. Alternatively, they might be a pro-life, pro-nuclear-family Catholic like Jason Kenney. How can that employer make the right decision and maximize safety in their workplace? If we learned anything from when the federal Liberals denied federal summer jobs grants to those who refused to take an oath defending abortion, it's that a simple pledge will flush out the authoritarians. The easiest liberation stamp of all, therefore, will be secured by making an oath to support abortion, eugenics, transgender sports, and all of the other critical civil rights issues du jour. If someone doesn't have the decency to agree with the majority on these issues, then they clearly are not committed to making Canada safer and won't be getting the 'rainbow coalition' stamp.
Finally, in the case of someone infected with HIV, they need only provide proof to strangers that they are undergoing antiretroviral therapy. For every other infectious disease that's treatable, there will be a 'treated' stamp, of course conferred only after validation by state healthcare officials.
Those quick to parrot Benjamin Franklin’s line suggesting that persons happy to trade liberty for safety deserve neither, have undoubtedly failed to recognize that the kind of hyper-individualist "liberty" old Ben held dear was at odds with the variety at the heart of our desired liberation. Franklin and other such liberal slave-owners figured liberty to mean an individual's freedom "from restriction or control by a government or other power.” Nowadays, the word means something different, something far more valuable. After all, we live in a democracy.
Despite vain efforts by antiquarians and Bill-of-Rights fetishists to preserve the Old Country's few non-majoritarian checks and balances—which serve only to hold back our progress—it is the people that form our government, and it is the government, therefore, that executes the people's will. To reject the popular will is to reject democracy itself; to break off with true freedom. Conversely, to accept the popular will is to be liberated; to accept shared freedom and fraternity.
The time is now. The people want to liberate us all with vaccine passports. I must stress here: there can be no greater democratic victory than herd immunity against the viruses discussed above.
Ask yourself: what good are the vaccine passports now being rolled out if they are to be outmoded before their potential is fully explored? Like most Canadians, when I go to the hair salon or to the Apple Store or to the Laurentians or to deface a church, I want to know for certain that everybody around me is non-threatening, not only in the viral sense, but in the political, theological, philosophical, physical, and emotional sense. Canadians should never again have to live in fear with the possibility that their neighbors or employees or customers could jeopardize their comfort. With the Liberation Passport, we will normalize safety and make Canada a kinder, gentler place.
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