Tacitus, John Bunyan and The Hope Accord

 Here is a link to the "Hope Accord": https://thehopeaccord.org/

The past four years or so have seen quite extraordinary levels of censorship and even officially-sanctioned coercion and gaslighting, to protect certain actions* and the officials responsible for putting them into effect, even from informed scrutiny stopping well short of criticism, never mind opposition or attack. Regardless of whether the reader's stance is to agree with or furiously condemn the principles put forward in the accord, readers might want to read it before coming to either position. And if the reader already has a position on this subject the only thing they have to fear from reading the according (it is not a long or wordy document), is having their mind changed. And it is the fear that people might have their minds changed which lies behind all censorship in the modern world and back, far into history.

* Those actions were pandemic-related in this instance, but alarming precedents were set right across the board.

 There is an article about censorship in the Roman Empire on the following link, which might ring a few bells with any reader familiar with the treatment of those reckless enough to question almost any aspect of the pandemic response, let alone the "natural" origin hypothesis of the completely novel pandemic virus itself:

https://brewminate.com/book-burning-and-censorship-in-the-ancient-roman-empire-and-provincial-roman-egypt/

 From which I have copied, as fair use, this quote of Tacitus which might even be out of copyright by now:

After concluding the speech he gives to Cordus, Tacitus says in his own voice:

The [senate] ordered his books to be burned by the aediles; but copies remained, hidden and afterwards published: a fact which moves you the more to deride the folly of those who believe that by an act of despotism in the present there can be extinguished also the memory of a succeeding age. On the contrary, genius chastised grows in authority; nor have alien kings or the imitators of their cruelty effected more than to crown themselves with ignominy and their victims with renown.

 As the article makes clear, Tacitus believed in freedom of speech for himself and other well-read members of the Roman elite, however dissident they may have been. Perhaps a better (and somewhat more modern) example comes from 1673 AD and the pen of John Bunyan, because no-one can accuse the tinker from Harrowden of being a member of any "privileged elite" and, in consequence, he was arguing not only for the right to speak, but also for the right to a courteous hearing! Which is precisely what members of Parliament, including my own MP, so shamefully and stupidly denied to Mr Andrew Bridgen by running away with hands over their ears in front of TV cameras when he broached those issues related to the Hope Accord in the House Of Commons, whether in the chamber or the committee room and Westminster Hall.

Bunyan wrote this to William Kiffin:

What need you, before you have showed one syllable or a reasonable argument in opposition to what I assert, thus trample my person, my gifts and graces, have I any, so disdainfully under your feet? What kind of a YOU am I? And why is MY rank so mean, that the most gracious and godly among you may not duly and soberly consider of what I have said?

Across three and a half centuries, Bunyan addresses our political and medical-scientific establishments on our behalf. Many of those who fled from Mr Bridgen because they feared he might be speaking the truth, have lost their seats now and are indeed crowned with ignominy, but many remain in Parliament. This gives them a chance to doff their crowns of ignominy by giving the Hope Accord a polite hearing, or at least reading it before vilifying, censoring and cancelling its authors and signatories.