The “Vaccine Passport” Trojan Horse

This week, it was reported that the Biden Administration is developing a “Vaccine Passport.”

News outlets claim this will come in the form of a scannable barcode showing proof of a vaccination or recent negative test. It could be used to enter planes, restaurants, concerts, sporting events, and the workplace.

If you weren’t born with a deep skepticism of the government, this might seem like a decent idea. You prove you got the vaccine, you get a passport, you go back to normal life! Hooray! 

Except, it’s not really that simple. Or innocuous.

Famed economist Frederic Bastiat implored us in The Law, his hallmark essay, to “peer past the obvious.”

In this case, we’re not talking about a piece of paper that shows if you’ve taken the vaccine or not. That already exists. This is an entirely new system that’s being built to track your health data and surveil your status.

This “passport” may seem like a useful tool to get things back to normal. Really, it’s a trojan horse for an infrastructure of spying, surveillance, and government control.

This proposal would be a new caste system. It divides those free to live from those doomed to isolation and shunning. And it’s a tyrannical government’s wildest dream.

Why?

Because establishing a passport for our health presumes our sickness. It denies us the ability to live our lives based on a presumption of guilt. It makes us beholden to the whims of an ever-growing bureaucracy creeping into our lives from Washington, DC.

But more importantly, once we grant our data to a government system, it becomes immortalized—a “Permanent Record,” as Edward Snowden titled his book on the topic. We become easier to track. Easier to control. Easier to turn into outcasts if we don’t comply. (Just look at China and their “social credit score” system.)

I hate getting doom and gloom, but I’m here to keep it real with you. Once this ship leaves the harbor, it’s likely gone for good. You can kiss your privacy goodbye.

COVID-19 is just the beginning. This won’t be the last “pandemic” we go through in our lifetime.

There will always be a crisis. An “unprecedented” situation. A reason for the government to reach its tentacles into the most personal, private aspects of your life and your family. (I wrote a book about this a few years ago…)

In the short term, we can be vocal and stand against draconian controls like this “passport.” It’s important that we do so.

But in the long term, how can we protect our children from candy-coated poison like this?

As Bastiat said, we must peer past the obvious. And we must educate young minds on why these nice-sounding government programs have the potential to destroy liberty.

I quoted The Law earlier in this newsletter. It’s a powerful essay about what laws are, what they represent, and how they can be perverted to harm people.

I’ve written a version of that book specifically for children. It’s called The Tuttle Twins Learn About the Law, and it explains these ideas in a way children can grasp and understand.

 It’s the first thing I’d recommend to a parent dealing with these discussions of vaccinations, passports, and “new normals.”

This is no easy time to be raising children. The media, the government, and much of our culture are working overtime to undermine you as a parent. But the Tuttle Twins team is here to help you teach your kids the ideas that matter, and give them a strong voice in a time of chaos and uncertainty.

For liberty…

— Connor