Canada is fining the Amish $300,000 for not downloading a COVID app

A month ago, news broke that, up in Canada, Justin Trudeau’s government is fining the Amish communist $300,000 ($222,660 American dollars). Their crime? They didn’t download the government’s COVID app. The twist, of course, is that the Amish don’t have smartphones. They eschew all modern technology. This story has made almost no headlines, but it’s important because it’s a preview of coming attractions if Kamala becomes president. This is what leftists do. Acting for your own good, they destroy you.

As anyone who has watched either Witness or Weird Al Yankovich’s brilliant Amish Paradise knows, the Amish lifestyle does not embrace modernity. To hark back to another American pop culture moment, the Amish have “no phone, no lights, no motor car, not a single luxury. Like Robinson Crusoe, it’s primitive as can be.” This is not because the Amish are victims. They have embraced a lifestyle of pre-modern simplicity because their faith calls upon them to live this way.

<img alt captext="Andrea Widburg” src=”https://conspiracyresource.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/canada-is-fining-the-amish-300000-for-not-downloading-a-covid-app.jpg”>

Image by Andrea Widburg

However, in Canada, religious beliefs are not a defense against a massively overreaching government. Rebel News reported on the story in August:

The problem began with the Canadian government’s enforcement of the ArriveCan app during the COVID-19 pandemic. This app was mandatory for anyone entering Canada, requiring travellers to submit their health information digitally.

The Amish, however, do not use smartphones, let alone apps. They also have religious exemptions from vaccinations, making the use of such technology unnecessary and intrusive for them. Yet, despite these clear exemptions, the government insisted on compliance, leading to severe penalties.

The result? The Amish community in Chatsworth has been slapped with nearly $300,000 in fines for not using the ArriveCan app. This is a community that doesn’t use electricity, let alone digital applications.

The fines were not just a bureaucratic oversight — they were a targeted action. The government even went so far as to place liens on their properties, effectively freezing their ability to obtain loans and transfer land titles within families. These punitive measures have left the Amish community in a state of shock and despair.

Although Canada does not have a First Amendment, it does have a 1982 “Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” According to that charter, Canada does have “freedom of religion.” It’s so—ahem—important that it appears very early in the endless document, a Section 2(a). This section promises that “Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms: a. freedom of conscience and religion.”

What’s unstated—the little caveat, the tiny asterisk—is that this freedom exists only if the government allows it. It’s a privilege, not a right.

In this regard, our Constitution is hugely different. As Obama once complained, the American Constitution is “a charter of negative liberties, [that] says what the states can’t do to you, says what the federal government can’t do to you…”

That’s exactly right. Privileges come from the government, and what the government giveth, the government can taketh away. Rights, however, are inherent in each individual, and the government cannot touch them unless for an extraordinarily good reason.

The way modern leftism works to get around these constitutional limitations is to dress the lust for power in the clothes of compassion. We’re not touching your rights. We want to do things for you. Or as Obama added in the same interview quoted above, that darn Constitution “doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf.” Reagan had the answer for that complaint: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”

Although Donald Trump broke Jonah Goldberg, I believe that Goldberg wrote one of the best books ever about the modern Democrat party: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. The memorable cover shows a smiley face with a little Hitler mustache.

The book’s point is that all modern totalitarianism, including Hitler’s, comes dressed in the guise of loving care. The government is your friend. The government will make your life better. Listen to the loving government. Do what the government tells you. Anyone who doesn’t listen to the government is bad. Indeed, they’re so bad they must be destroyed. The trajectory is always the same.

Trudeau mandated that the COVID app was for the good of Canadians. Therefore, all Canadians must get with the program. Those who didn’t made themselves enemies of the loving state and they must pay. By defying the government’s love, they’ve lost the privilege to have freedom of conscience and religion.

If you watch Kamala, her message—her “joy” and “vibes”—is the same as Trudeau’s. I’m the embodiment of a loving government. Just do what I say. But if you don’t, look at what happened to Donald Trump and everyone near him. And don’t believe that we won’t do it to you, too.