Austria is the only western, liberal democracy that imposed mandatory vaccinations on every person living on its soil above the age of eighteen. No carve-outs. No ambiguity. Obey or be ruined. I live here with my family, so this was not an abstract policy debate conducted at a safe intellectual distance. It was personal. Intimate. Immediate.
The law—with its draconian enforcement mechanisms—was eventually dropped before it could be properly tested in court. But by then the damage had already been done. Something fundamental broke in me. I had believed—naively, as it turns out—that a democratic country would never go that far. History should have cured me of that illusion long ago.
After all, Hitler came to power riding a democratically legitimized majority. Australia treated its aborigines as near-humans well into the twentieth century, tearing children from their families with full democratic approval. Democracy, stripped of its marketing gloss, is nothing more than the dictatorship of the majority. And majorities are astonishingly easy to fool—provided the narrative is compelling enough.
We have seen this pattern too many times to count.
So no, democracy is not a guarantee of freedom. It is not even a reliable path to ethically acceptable lives for everyone. The only real protection lies in individually enforceable basic guarantees. Hard limits. Non-negotiable rights. There must be liberties that cannot be voted away—such as the right not to be medically coerced against one’s will, and the right to speak openly about it. And when those liberties are violated, the penalties must be severe.
The virus scare is over. For most people, that seems to be the end of the story. Time to move on. Nothing more to see. I would argue precisely the opposite. This episode revealed the true face of majorities—and it was ugly. It showed us, yet again, that they cannot be trusted.
Either we change the system—and that is rare, difficult, and usually resisted—or we remain permanently aware, on an individual level, of the beast we are living with. At all times. On every topic. With no exceptions.
There can be no trust. Because trust is what gets you crushed.