The Feds Want To Control Your Town And Friends
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently released an advisory titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” It warns that social isolation is a major public health problem. The 81-page document presents six government-directed “pillars” of action to address the health hazards of social isolation.
On the surface, these six directives may look innocuous, but they present a clear and present danger to the autonomy of our private lives and relationships. The project is potentially so massive in scope that it’s not an overstatement to say it threatens to regulate our freedom of association in ways we never could have imagined.
Let’s look in greater depth at those pillars and the risks they pose.
‘Building a Social Infrastructure’
The first stated goal is to “strengthen social infrastructure in local communities.” It defines “social infrastructure” as the regular events and institutions that make up community life, and says the federal government should both fund local organizations and direct how they’re structured, including their locations. This can only mean that all local communities must answer to the federal bureaucracy in the quest to strengthen social connections among people.
Social infrastructure, the report says, includes physical parts of a community, such as housing, libraries, parks and recreation spaces, transport systems, and so forth. The report expresses concern that some people have better access to such locations than other people, and recommends federal interventions.
Those are likely to be used to promote densified housing along the lines of the “15-minute city” (more accurately termed 15-minute ghettoes), as well as the eventual dismantling of single-family housing. The goal of replacing private vehicles with public transportation fits easily into this scheme too.
I don’t presume that this plan will, by itself, drive wholesale changes in our physical infrastructure. But it would certainly provide authority and justification for changes supported by radical environmentalists, all of which diminish our freedoms.
The advisory warns that participation is mandatory if the plan is to work: “It will take all of us — individuals, families, schools, and workplaces, health care and public health systems, technology companies, governments, faith organizations, and communities — working together…”
The report’s proposed infrastructure to solve the problem of social isolation seems designed to lock everybody into compliance with and dependence upon federal mandates. Local control is then lost.
We end up with a massive federal infrastructure that can monitor the levels of social connection and disconnection in every nook and cranny of society. As described in the report, this would mean every institution, every governmental department, every volunteer association, every locality, every church, every faith community, every organization, every club, every service club, every sports league, and so on, would likely be assessed and “strengthened” to promote social connection.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently released an advisory titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” It warns that social isolation is a major public health problem. The 81-page document presents six government-directed “pillars” of action to address the health hazards of social isolation.
On the surface, these six directives may look innocuous, but they present a clear and present danger to the autonomy of our private lives and relationships. The project is potentially so massive in scope that it’s not an overstatement to say it threatens to regulate our freedom of association in ways we never could have imagined.
Let’s look in greater depth at those pillars and the risks they pose.
‘Building a Social Infrastructure’
The first stated goal is to “strengthen social infrastructure in local communities.” It defines “social infrastructure” as the regular events and institutions that make up community life, and says the federal government should both fund local organizations and direct how they’re structured, including their locations. This can only mean that all local communities must answer to the federal bureaucracy in the quest to strengthen social connections among people.
Social infrastructure, the report says, includes physical parts of a community, such as housing, libraries, parks and recreation spaces, transport systems, and so forth. The report expresses concern that some people have better access to such locations than other people, and recommends federal interventions.
Those are likely to be used to promote densified housing along the lines of the “15-minute city” (more accurately termed 15-minute ghettoes), as well as the eventual dismantling of single-family housing. The goal of replacing private vehicles with public transportation fits easily into this scheme too.
I don’t presume that this plan will, by itself, drive wholesale changes in our physical infrastructure. But it would certainly provide authority and justification for changes supported by radical environmentalists, all of which diminish our freedoms.
The advisory warns that participation is mandatory if the plan is to work: “It will take all of us — individuals, families, schools, and workplaces, health care and public health systems, technology companies, governments, faith organizations, and communities — working together…”
The report’s proposed infrastructure to solve the problem of social isolation seems designed to lock everybody into compliance with and dependence upon federal mandates. Local control is then lost.
We end up with a massive federal infrastructure that can monitor the levels of social connection and disconnection in every nook and cranny of society. As described in the report, this would mean every institution, every governmental department, every volunteer association, every locality, every church, every faith community, every organization, every club, every service club, every sports league, and so on, would likely be assessed and “strengthened” to promote social connection.
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and I don't need government to set up play dates for me.
I've gotten in....