Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.
This week, a federal judge in Florida finally struck down a federal mask mandate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An extensive number of executive branch agencies have acted in an authoritarian manner throughout the COVID-19 era: The Occupational Safety and Health Administration infamously attempted to cram down a vaccine mandate on every private employer in America, a policy struck down by the Supreme Court; the CDC blocked evictions for over a year based on the premise that millions would be thrown from their homes if they didn’t take action. But the CDC’s travel mask mandate has been particularly annoying for Americans, given the fact that all over the country, Americans have either been vaccinated or acquired natural immunity, and there is no evidence whatsoever that cloth or surgical masks do anything against the omicron variant of COVID-19.
Nonetheless, the CDC pressed forward this month with a new extension to its mask mandate, despite the fact that the CDC simultaneously argued that beginning in late May, it would relieve Title 42, a regulation designed to allow Border Patrol to turn away likely illegal immigrants at the border. That regulation was rooted in the premise that a COVID-19 emergency negated the legal requirement to process asylum seekers. The White House provided zero justification for the CDC’s extension; instead, White House press secretary Jen Psaki struggled to explain why toddlers on planes should remain masked, but attendees at the White House press room didn’t have to. “I’m not a doctor,” she spat.
Of course, Psaki’s lack of medical background hasn’t prevented her from announcing that the best standard of medical care requires minors who are gender confused to receive puberty blockers on the path toward genital-mutilating surgery. But Americans shouldn’t expect consistency from their moral betters in the White House.
Upon the announcement of the judge’s ruling striking down the CDC mask mandate on the grounds that the CDC hadn’t actually bothered to follow its own regulatory procedures, the Left went into spasms of apoplexy. Public figures began posting pictures of themselves donning masks on planes: former Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett tweeted, “Wearing my mask no matter what non-scientists tell me I can do”; Roland Martin tweeted, “I don’t give a damn what some grossly unqualified Donald Trump judge said. I’m double masked and wearing goggles on this Nashville to DC flight. I had COVID in December. Y’all can KISS MY ASS about me not wanting it again. And any fool saying they don’t matter is a damn liar.”
Now, it should be said that nobody has actively banned anyone from wearing a mask. It is your choice to don one, as epidemiologically useless as such a gesture may be. But those on the Left seem to be under the wild misimpression that anything not prohibited is now mandatory — an act of pure intellectual projection springing from the Left’s insistence on collective rulemaking. For those on the Left, individual freedom represents a threat to everyone; to allow individuals the ability to choose therefore undermines the entire scheme. Those on the Left simply project this mindset onto everyone else. Thus, they believe that anyone who opposes mask mandates wants to force everyone to unmask.
This is untenable but predictable: for those on the Left, the collective is the irreducible unit of politics. There are no individuals. And anyone who disagrees is, in the words of Robin Givhan of The Washington Post, “childish and selfish.”
Or perhaps — just perhaps — the most childish and selfish among us are those who beg government agencies to exceed their statutory authority in order to ensure that we all mirror their favored priorities. Perhaps those who have spent two years declaring their authority over every aspect of Americans’ lives ought to consider the possibility that we’re happy to let them ruin their own, but that we would prefer they leave us alone. And most of all, perhaps the COVID-19 paranoiacs ought to spend just a moment considering whether there is a space between mandatory and prohibited where others might be granted a smidgen of liberty.
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14 thoughts on “Ben Shapiro: The COVID-19 authoritarians panic over the end of the mask mandates”
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Interesting revolution. There was a time when the family was the basic socio-political unit. Then some people said no, the individual is. Among other results, individuals have lost themselves, losing a vital starting point for their identities. Now we’ve gone to the collective, something much more imposing and oppressive than the family could ever have hoped to be.
Not sure why anyone is listening to CDC, although your tax money help fund this organization, it’s still a private entity, not a government agency. CDC has been wrong about so many things. Someone should print the disclaimer from the CDC website, stating mask is not effective, so you can’t suit them if you get sick while wearing a mask, so why are they advising people to wear a mask???
The CDC and empty headed clown in the WH have vastly exceeded their authority by mandating masks across the nation. This is a law that only congress can initiate; they are the law makers. The CDC as an appointed and not elected agency can only recommend!!
Am not a psychologist, but these people who held on to the mask mandate are suffering from “Stockholm syndrome”, false security. They obviously don’t appreciate freedom of choice, and as the article mentioned, no one is stopping them wearing their face diaper into their grave, yet they want to take choice away from others.
There is no science behind the efficiency of prolong donning a mask aside from breathing in their own waste and harboring bacteria, besides most people wear the same dirty mask. JMO
That was scientific; but theatrical performance. The mask mandate was both for show and to silence anyone who doesn’t agree with the Leftists childishness.
The real problem the left has with the end of the mandate is not so much it has ended but,rather, it leaves the decision up to the individual. A dangerous precedent in the minds of all liberals. Many will choose to continue to wear the masks. That is their right. But the real crazies who rant and rave and declare they will continue to mask up simply prove the point that it is a choice.
They are not Liberals but leftists. They are for everything but liberty. In fact they opposed liberty.
Of course, they are raising hell. The masks were their last vestige of CONTROL of the SHEEPLE. I think this whole mess with the virus was a test case for the gov’t to see just how easily it would be to gain CONTROL.
So glad the brutal control freaks on the Left are totally exposed before the next election. Their continued hysteria, their nasty public behavior towards the rest of us, should give us ALL the impetus we need to SHOW UP AND VOTE LIKE OUR LIVES DEPEND ON IT. Because these freaks won’t stop at election fraud or anything else. They have no ethical line they won’t cross.
So we will finally see the lefties actually wearing masks now?
Sounds like it. For them, it’s never too late to do some political theater.
An SOB is now defined as a “Son of a Biden”.
Roland is a has-been; Jarrett is a traitor. Call me a liar to my face – I dare you.
I’ve pretty much given up all hope of democrats displaying any show of intelligence, logic, and common sense. They’re committed to the devil’s insanity and there’s no going back.