Kudos to Dan Wootton and GB News for Challenging the Lockdowns

“With our liberty gone and public health campaigns used to terrify the masses, lockdowns are now the go-to method for dealing with this outbreak. So given the public’s surprising tolerance for such measures, could they be used for other things?”

This is the hard-hitting question journalist Dan Wootton recently asked on Britain’s newest TV news and commentary channel, GB News.¹

Launched on June 13, 2021, GB News seeks to challenge the existing TV news establishment in the United Kingdom, which is dominated by government-owned organizations such as the BBC and Channel 4.² According to GB News’s editorial charter, it does “not shy away from controversial issues” and proclaims a list of values including “the independence of our journalism,” “putting facts first,” “respect for opinions and those expressing them,” “the right of every individual to form and share their views,” and “holding our leaders, our society and ourselves accountable.”³

In the spirit of tackling controversial issues head-on, GB News immediately began to question the established narrative that rights-violating lockdowns are the proper solution to the COVID-19 outbreak. On his GB News show Tonight Live with Dan Wootton, Wootton highlights some of the problems that the widespread acceptance of lockdowns present for the future of liberty:

Lockdowns are a crude measure. Mark my words, in the years to come we will discover they have caused far more deaths and devastation than the government has ever admitted. . . . But, tragically, the doomsday scientists and public health officials have taken control. . . . The government [is] satisfied its 15-month-long never-ending scare campaign has suitably terrified the public into supporting lockdowns. But if we don’t fight back against this madness, some of the damage will be irreversible. . . . If we can’t get freedom back in the middle of summer, then I struggle to maintain hope. It’s increasingly clear now that there is a move among some public health officials and politicians to create an ultra-cautious biosecurity state, copying the likes of China.⁴ 

Kudos to Wootton for bringing some sense to the news coverage of lockdowns, and kudos to GB News for taking on the government-funded behemoth that is the BBC and introducing more competition into British TV news media.

Sadly, the channel’s controversial positions have already drawn the ire of many who would rather not see views they consider unacceptable expressed on the air. Government broadcasting regulator Ofcom has received an avalanche of complaints about the channel, many specifically in response to Wootton’s comments on lockdowns, and several big businesses including IKEA and European brewer Kopparberg have pulled their advertising from GB News in an attempt to distance themselves from its controversial positions, in particular its stated intention to combat cancel culture.⁵

Wootton’s efforts to defend freedom are admirable, although he does make the mistake of referring to “our freedoms” as being “God-given.” Grounding freedom and individual rights on the supernatural—on the not-to-be-proven, on faith—gives the opponents of liberty license to dismiss individual rights as baseless. In fact, individual rights derive directly from man’s nature as a rational being who must live by his own judgment. Building on the foundations of Aristotle, John Locke, and the American founders, Ayn Rand demonstrated this fact in her Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal:

Since knowledge, thinking, and rational action are properties of the individual, since the choice to exercise his rational faculty or not depends on the individual, man’s survival requires that those who think be free of the interference of those who don’t. Since men are neither omniscient nor infallible, they must be free to agree or disagree, to cooperate or to pursue their own independent course, each according to his own rational judgment. Freedom is the fundamental requirement of man’s mind.⁶

Despite Wootton’s faulty understanding of rights, his comments on lockdowns are a welcome breath of fresh air in a society that at times seems to have almost wholly bought in to the idea that taking away our liberties is the proper solution to a pandemic. He highlights the real damage lockdowns do to people’s lives and businesses. His observations about the harm that lockdowns cause and warnings about their potential implementation in the future are powerful and important—and should be heeded around the world.

About Thomas Walker-Werth

Thomas Walker-Werth is associate editor at The Objective Standard and a fellow at both Objective Standard Institute and Foundation for Economic Education. He is currently writing his first full-length book, Reason for Living: A Rational, Fact-Based Approach to Living Your Best Life. See more of his work at walker-werth.com.

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