These are NOT the faces of free people. These are the faces of livestock, obeying the will of their masters, their owners.
Some do it with joy – like dogs. Some do it with distain – like cats forced to. But if they are wearing masks (face-diapers, one correspondent calls them) because they are told to, they are not free.
On this 3rd of July, AD 2020, the last day of Anno Libertatus 444, too many Americans are being told to do so. Florida, Texas, Washington State, California, and else where. These are NOT States in which liberty can still be found. (It’s like the story of the woman offered $5000 to sleep with the man, who then offers $5.00. She accepted the first offer: she is a hooker: the rest is just haggling over the price. They have accepted SOME tyranny – now it is just haggling over the terms of slavery.)
In a couple of hours, 7500 or so people will gather at Mount Rushmore, to enjoy fireworks and see President Trump also enjoy the fireworks. Trump and Governor Noem (also to be present) have been condemned and harassed unmercifully for even having the fireworks, inviting Trump, and for not requiring “social” distancing and wearing of masks. The entire thing (together with the Twenty-dollar Rebellion and the Pandemic Panic and Lockdown) has become a cottage industry. A bunch of idiots have called for (and a few have threatened) the destruction of Mount Rushmore. No doubt the protesters (and perhaps a few rioters and even some looters) are already positioned to block routes, terrorize locals, and make lots of nice video shots for the media.
In South Dakota, unless they try to attack someone, damage something, or trespass, they are free to do so. South Dakota recognizes that is what the Declaration of Independence is about – and what supposedly the Constitution was meant to protect. Along with a whole lot more: free enterprise, free trade, the peace, protection from tyrants, and more.
All of which we have seen stolen away from us, time and time again. Especially this wonderful year of AD 2020. As I’ve asked before, is this an Independence Day to celebrate what we HAD and LOST? Or is it to look forward to a time when we again HAVE those freedoms? That liberty? Or is it just another bit of bread and circuses to keep the yokels happy?
The title of this commentary comes from an old science fiction novel, and should be burned into our minds – and constantly said to the Karens, the Mrs. Grundies, the nannystaters, the politicians and the bureaucrats, and the health enforcers.
YOU and I have the answer to what Independence Day means in 2020. Think well up on it.
The Price of Liberty 
There are times and places where a mask makes sense (and would make sense in the case of e.g. flu season as well). Obviously people should be free to wear, or not wear, a mask based on their judgment of the situation (and property owners to require, allow, or forbid mask-wearing on their property — banks being institutions that tend to do so, for obvious reasons, in normal times).
But for a lot of people it seems to be the equivalent of wearing a yarmulke or having a cross drawn in ash on the forehead — it’s just a public signifier of religious belief, in this case in the state’s omniscience and in the demons identified by that omniscience.
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Tom, that is a great point that had not occurred to me. Thanks for the thought.
Hmm, does that mean when States or local authorities explicitly give protesters a pass on wearing masks and social distancing and tracing, that those agencies are admitting they recognizing that those people have withdrawn their consent to be governed?
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