Wherein does it lie? In the disdain with which its proud technocrats dismiss conscience. Conscience is no quantifiable thing; it has no weight or measure, and it cannot be listed among a nation's assets. Science can't prove it exists.

Yet conscience is no mere trifle. Conscience distinguishes humanity from the brutes of creation. It is the little spark of celestial fire that motivated the obedience of our nations' greatest heroes in their darkest hour. It is the voice of God in the soul.

Over the past 18 months, our fundamental freedoms have all been assaulted by a virus. The public incursions against freedom have been protested, but the small private matter of conscience has received scant attention.

Why? Because it is the casualty of "friendly fire"—by friends who never acknowledged it.

Conscience was caught in the politicians' war on COVID-19 and its variants. They confessed their faith in science to defeat it. Progress demanded it. Computer models predicted the threat to the control of "the system" of public health to be so terrible that to defend their Technopoly, as coined by Neil Postman in his book of the same name, politicians seized extraordinary emergency powers to aid science in its certain victory.

This unwavering faith in science was completely irrational, if not unscientific. Science itself tells us that viruses are not living organisms. They cannot be killed. They also mutate. All the gains from rushing the slow safety protocols of science to contain last year's virus were swiftly lost in subsequent variants.

As the unflagging determination to win the war continues, the illogic of the position grows. That is because it never was a fight about science—it was a fight to defend the pride of the idol of technocracy and extend its dominance. That means more control for the technocrats.