WHO agrees with whom it serves: the Chinese Communist Party. About this rule, it is impossible to deny—it is unreasonable to doubt—that the World Health Organization serves the world’s worst rulers. About this fact, we have proof. We have a year-old message from Taiwan about the virus now known as COVID-19. We have an inquiry that now reads like a record of inquest. We have a record that now reads like a requiem, where votaries live in darkness and votives flicker and die before a veil of ignorance.
Before us lies the history of 2020, of a missive of truth versus a big red book of lies. Before us lies the history of lives lost during a year-long march by Beijing to conquer Western culture without firing a shot; without developing a shot to save the life of a single Westerner, either. Before us lies more of the same unless we remove our masks, if only for a moment, so the world may hear us.
Whether what we say lasts on paper is less important than our belief in certain everlasting truths, that among these are the rightness of a people with an everlasting name and the glory of the righteous among the nations; that Jews and Christians refuse to rend their garments in mourning or mourn what they have no right to render unto anyone; that the Constitution exists to protect more than contracts; that the Declaration of Independence is a defense of existence itself; that our rights belong to a covenant with our Creator; that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is greater than the god that failed in Russia—and the god that will fail in China.
These rights transcend the will of tyrants and the tyranny of nonexistent majorities born on Election Day.
These rights endure because they are true, despite the forces of monopoly or the state’s monopoly on the use of force. Because these rights are true, they are the reason the world remembers an unknown rebel—Tank Man—rather than any member of a tank crew in Tiananmen Square.
Tank Man stands above the legends of the battlefield.
He stands taller than any arch in Kursk or wall in El Alamein. He stands alone because of what he did, unarmed and alone. He stopped the tanks.
Truth sent Tank Man into battle.
Truth summons us to continue the battle, so no lie may be free of criticism and no liar may be free to terrorize his critics.
The lesson of 2020 is to never yield to the politics of science or the corruption of politics, to be not afraid of organizations that assail the public or mobs that organize to assault the public.
The lesson is to be brave, earnest, and faithful.