It’s not that the left doesn’t understand the idea of personal freedom, it’s that they only want such rights for themselves and few others granted special status by the liberals who think rights only exist where they say they do.
Nowhere has this ideological flaw been so apparent than throughout the pandemic. Democrat officials from the federal level all the way down to city councils used “public health” authority to run roughshod over individual freedom. Cities barred residents from going outside maskless, even when alone on an empty street. Nonessential workers were prohibited from leaving their homes. Travelers were required to wear masks at all times. Eventually the Biden administration tried to force vaccines on millions of Americans.
Putting an exclamation point on the left’s disregard for individual freedom was their reaction to a federal judge in Florida striking down the CDC’s travel mask mandate this week. For them, the long-delayed end to one of the last visual vestiges of the pandemic was an existential crisis. It elicited something of a death rattle from those on the left whose entire identities and personal purpose were evidently wrapped up in adhering to and enforcing COVID protocol.
Even though it was leftist Democrats who used their authority to restrict individual freedom, liberals — ironically — reacted to the federal judge’s ruling that struck down the CDC mandate for travelers by accusing the Trump-appointed judge of being part of a “power-drunk juristocracy.”
Other liberals fretted about the ruling as a move to “diminish the authority of the national government to act, across many fronts, while increasing the authority of state governments.” The horrors of federalism are, apparently, terrifying to the leftists who just love when the federal government stomps on the individual liberty of Americans.
And even though U.S. airlines, Amtrak, and several big-city public transit agencies followed the federal judge’s lead and rescinded their mask mandates, the left reacted seemingly more strongly to Uber’s decision to follow suit. Again, it demonstrated their absolute ignorance of individual liberty. “What about the driver’s safety?” liberals shrieked, apparently ignoring the fact that anyone can still choose to wear a mask, however silly they may look. Other leftists demanded special accomodation to be able to order Ubers only with drivers who agree to wear masks to soothe their own personal irrational anxieties. “Am I allowed to require my driver to wear a mask?” still more questioned. The left is exceptional at feigning ignorance of individual freedom — but only when it comes to things with which they disagree.
When it comes to personal freedom they claim guarantees their right to kill unborn children, they act as though God (if they believed in him) personally descended from the clouds to tell them they had the “right” to have an abortion. But, proving the left’s flawed and inconsistent ideology, even their nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States can’t (read: won’t) say when the Constitution’s protections attach themselves to a human life in its development — I’m looking at you, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
On Wednesday, Jen Psaki gave us the cherry on top of the left’s authoritarian God complex when she said the quiet part out loud about the Biden administration’s decision to appeal the federal judge’s ruling on the CDC’s mandate.
According to Psaki’s quiet-part-out-loud admission, the Biden Department of Justice is looking to appeal the ruling “for current and future public health crises” because “we want to preserve that authority for the CDC to have in the future.” And there it is.
It’s not about the White House’s beloved Science™, it’s about preserving Biden’s power that Fauci, Walensky, et al. have wielded since taking office to suppress individual liberty and personal choice. They want to make sure that future COVID variants — or the next out of control virus — can be used to shut down the country, change election policies, silence dissent, and be used to punish conservatives who believe the Constitution and its protections of God-given freedoms always apply.
While the left’s suppression of individual freedom has been bad, it’s far less dystopian that what the world has watched play out in Shanghai in recent days. But the attitude and underlying ideology are the same. As the Chinese Communist Party drones that strafed Shanghai apartment balconies with its propaganda said, “Control your soul’s desire for freedom.” It’s the same message from leftists, liberal media, and elected Democrats — your freedom is what they decide it is.