Feehery: Independence Day

COVID-19 has exposed the greatness of America, inadvertently.

Unlike in other places, especially in other English-speaking countries, the rich and the powerful continue to exert unnatural and unhealthy control over largely docile populations, all in the name of public health.

The irony should be lost on nobody. When authoritarian regimes get into power, it is always on the precept that they are doing it for the good of the people.

In America, the authoritarians won some early victories. They sufficiently scared the American people with their ridiculous propaganda that we are all in this together and that we only need two weeks to slow the spread, to make it easier for local tyrants to shut small shops and big restaurants, local gyms and national parks. The propogandists even bamboozled President Trump and against his best instincts, he agreed with their plans to destroy the only thing that was going to get him reelected, the economy.

But because our system is decentralized and power is dispersed throughout the country, the authoritarians couldn’t hang on forever. And at some point, first at the local level and then at the state level, little rebellions led to a counter-narrative.

And that counter-narrative was very powerful. Lockdowns don’t work. Mask mandates are ineffective. There are ways to protect those most vulnerable without making everybody stay in their homes.

The elite narrative was driven on the coasts and in blue states and cities. The counter-narrative was driven by red states and in the heartland.

Unlike in Canada or the United Kingdom or Ireland or New Zealand or Australia, we have a constitution that contains a Bill of Rights that protects the right of the American people to freely assemble, freely communicate and freely worship. And that First Amendment to the Constitution is backed by a Second Amendment, which makes government think twice about taking those freedoms away.

And while local jurisdictions temporarily succeeded in limited America’s freedoms, they couldn’t do it for the long haul, because in America, we take our independence very, very seriously. A local mayor or governor might close down a church for a few weeks, but that small victory won’t last that long, because in America, we take the right to worship the way we want — very seriously.

Another thing we have in America that they don’t necessarily have in other countries is scheduled elections. In this country, a prime minister can’t call for an election whenever the feeling strikes him.

And in the last election and in the elections to come, the voters made clear and are going to make clear what they thought of the government’s efforts to shut down our world for little to no reason. Trump lost because he mishandled COVID, not because of some grand conspiracy. But plenty of Republicans, especially at the state level and in the U.S. House, won their elections because they took a clear stand against the COVID lockdowns.

This is why America is great. Here, elections matter. And politicians are accountable to the voters.

And here, we have enough freedom built into the system to insure that we have enough laboratories to experiment and test the various propositions. In some parts of America, they locked down and masked up. In other parts, they didn’t do either. And the results were largely the same. So now we know, lockdowns don’t matter and mask mandates don’t work.

We would have never known that fact had we not had our federal system, where localities got to decide how to best fight a virus like COVID.

The elites don’t like it when their theories get disproven. But that’s another great thing about America. The elites get their say and they have their influence, but at the end of the day in this country, it is the people who rule.

And the people now know that the time for lockdowns is over. On this Independence Day, it is time to reassert our independence from government lockdowns and the tyranny of the elites.

Feehery is a partner at EFB Advocacy and blogs at www.thefeeherytheory.com. He served as spokesman to former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), as communications director to former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) when he was majority whip and as a speechwriter to former House Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.).