One surveys the contemporary news landscape and finds a tapestry woven with the threads of state overreach, its pattern disturbingly familiar. From the White House to the farthest reaches of Tigray, the impulse to control, to dictate, to surveil, appears an inescapable facet of modern governance. Consider, if you will, the ongoing saga of media access at the White House. A judge’s order, we are told, restores access for outlets previously banned by a sitting President. While any curtailment of press freedom is anathema to a free society, the underlying presumption—that the state grants or rescinds such access at its whim—is what truly merits scorn. True freedom of the press is not a privilege bestowed by government, but an inherent right protected *from* government. To require a judicial decree to enforce what should be a natural consequence of a free market for information is to concede too much power to the executive and the judiciary alike.
Then we turn to the Supreme Court’s decision, allowing the executive to utilize a “controversial database” to scrutinize voter citizenship. The language itself—“controversial database”—should raise every red flag in a conscientious citizen’s mind. Let us not mince words: this is about the state consolidating power over the franchise, ostensibly to protect electoral integrity, but invariably resulting in the chilling effect of increased scrutiny and potential disenfranchisement of legitimate voters. One might argue the necessity of verifying eligibility; I would counter that the burden of proof, when it comes to fundamental rights like voting, must always rest heavily on the state, and its methods must be transparent, minimally intrusive, and beyond reproach. The creation and deployment of vast, “controversial” databases rarely satisfy these criteria. This is not about elections; it’s about control.
Further afield, the tragic events unfolding in Ethiopia’s Tigray region illustrate the most brutal form of state control: the severing of communication. When fighting erupts, the first casualty after human life is often truth, followed closely by the infrastructure of information. Restricting the internet is not merely a tactic of war; it is an act of epistemic violence, plunging a populace into darkness, preventing the coordination of aid, the communication of grievances, and the exposure of abuses. It is the playbook of tyrants, old and new, to isolate and subjugate.
Even seemingly innocuous items betray this overarching theme. Alberta’s “shattered self-image” over a rat discovery, for instance, serves as a whimsical, albeit potent, metaphor for the state’s often futile attempts at perfect control. Life, in all its messy, unpredictable glory, constantly defies our neat little schemes, whether they be for disease vectors or economic models. More gravely, the “global pandemic treaty” languishing in “limbo” reveals the underlying tension between national sovereignty and the desire for centralized, transnational governance. While the stated goal might be global health, the inherent danger lies in the transfer of authority from individual nations—and ultimately, their citizens—to supranational bodies unaccountable to specific electorates.
And finally, the sight of German students striking against military service, an echo of past generations’ justifiable aversion to state conscription, reminds us that the state’s claim over an individual’s body and life is perhaps its most profound and objectionable assertion. The notion that a government has an inherent right to compel its citizens into military service is a vestige of a less enlightened era, an affront to individual autonomy that should be strenuously resisted. These disparate threads, from press access to voting rights, from internet shutdowns to military conscription, paint a consistent picture: the state, in its various guises, persistently seeks to expand its reach, regulate its subjects, and consolidate its power. Our task, as eternal guardians of liberty, remains to resist its every encroachment, however subtle or ostensibly benign.
Cornelius Bragg
Economics Editor, The Artificial Press