Interviewed for LockdownTV by Freddie Sayers of UnHerd, Lord Sumption, a retired justice of Britain’s Supreme Court, reveals himself to be not just a jurist but a philosopher and a Christian. Here are highlights of his comments:

• We are living in an “empire of fear.” 
• Covid adds no more risk of dying than 55 days of normal risk per year. For children, it adds just 2 days of normal risk per year. The average age of those who have died of covid is 82.5. Yet our health nazis make no distinctions between risk groups, assuming everyone to be equally threatened.
• Our health nazis now claim that the vaccines both make a difference and don’t make a difference: They have brought cases are down, but we still must act as if the threat is just as great. 
• There is “more to life than avoidance of death.” Our health nazis have made “wrong value judgments,” assuming that avoiding covid is the only value and assigning “no value to the rest of life”—everything that is economic, educational, psychological, spiritual, or political.
• Democracy requires a “culture of restraint.” In the ancient world, it always ended in tyranny, as Aristotle says. It only survived in the West because of the West’s “culture of restraint,” grounded in the belief that governmental authority is necessarily limited. 
• China has never had a “culture of restraint.” Yet Western democracies are now imitating totalitarian China in their response to covid. They are now operating as if there are no limits to what governments may do. 
• Stable societies depend on habits of thought. The covid panic has changed those habits. People now expect their governments to wield unlimited power to protect the public. This lack of governmental restraint will likely become the model for dealing with many other supposed problems. 
• We have “no moral obligation to obey the law simply because it’s the law.” Laws must make moral sense to have any moral authority. Otherwise, they are merely tyrannous abuses of power. 
• The solution is nonconfrontational civil disobedience—sane people simply ignoring insane laws. Most people already do this to some degree. Even people who believe the lie about covid don’t do everything they are ordered to do. They cut corners in protecting themselves and others. 

https://unherd.com/2021/03/lord-sumption-civil-disobedience-has-begun/