It’s Day 286 of Ohio’s 15-day shutdown and Day 46 of a statewide curfew that was supposed to be lifted three weeks ago.
Deb and I are fine today.
Close your eyes and, if you can, remember what our American Life looked like a year ago. Think about the high-revving economy, the optimism, the low unemployment, the possibilities presented by a vibrant culture and the good fortune to be alive at that moment in the greatest country on Earth.
Now open your eyes and look around. If you hadn’t lived through the last year, you wouldn’t have believed this was even possible.
How do most Americans react to what they see? With two words:
“Thanks, China.”
That, right there, is ignorant. Pointing a finger at China for what’s happened in this country over the last 12 months is mindless blame-shifting. That the Chi-Coms managed an outbreak badly, or even maliciously, is true but irrelevant.
Now pick your head up, look around again and repeat after me:
China didn’t do this. A virus didn’t do this. It didn’t have to happen. We did this to ourselves.
The smoldering pile of economic and cultural rubble atop which we sit is a mess of our own making. It’s the price we’re paying for decades of increasing dependence, ceding our sovereignty to a ravenous State, sacrificing individual liberties all along the way.
When 2020 rolled ’round, the State overreacted to a contagion posing a miniscule threat to “public health,” seizing control through exercise of unlawful authority. And the sheepish masses reflexively complied.
We allowed this. We canceled all those public events. We put millions out of work. We closed countless small businesses for good. We caused spikes in depression and divorce, overdoses and suicides. We made sure that school systems already failing are now completely incapable of delivering anything resembling education.
We killed our traditions. We destroyed our own culture.
We created the tyranny it’s now our duty to defy.
When the State issued decree after nonsensical decree, we didn’t push back. When the State was grossly wrong, repeatedly, and when its orders clearly weren’t grounded in facts, much less science, we didn’t rise to challenge.
The sweeping, hysterical response to this virus has been — and continues to be — an enormous collectivist hoax. We went along with it. We played our part in Pandemic Theater.
We knew what was happening, and we fell for it anyway.
Get good and comfortable with that, America. Own it. And for cryin’ out loud, stop blaming China or some damned virus — you look like a fool.
In the 2016 presidential primary election I voted for Ted Cruz. I’d been following him for years, and I was impressed with his commitment to the Constitution, backed by action that tracked his rhetoric. Maybe Cruz wasn’t as libertarian as, say, Rand Paul — and, as it turned out, he was no match for populist Trump — but he was a candidate I was proud to vote for then and he’s a U.S. Senator I’m proud to support now.
Well, Ted Cruz announced yesterday that he’s leading a group of 11 senators who will object to Electoral College certification by Congress this Wednesday. It’s the so-called “third option,” a variation on the “Hail Mary” I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. It would demand a ten-day emergency audit by a special electoral commission.
Will it work? I’ll answer that in a minute. First, let’s consider the source.
Ted Cruz is brilliant, thoughtful and articulate. He’s not rash, and he’s not a crank. He’s also not given to staging stunts, something that can’t be said of most of the spastic, insubstantial proposals I’ve seen (including those from The White House). If Ted Cruz gets behind something — and especially when he takes point, as he is in this case — we can be sure that it’s legally and constitutionally sound.
His stated goal is “to restore Americans’ faith in our electoral process and protect our democracy.” That’s as it should be, and considering that a reported 39% of Americans say that the 2020 elections were somehow corrupted by fraud, it’ll also be a tough bar to clear.
But will it work?
Cruz is politically savvy enough to know that the deck is stacked against him. Not only does he have to battle a Democrat-controlled House (albeit with a slimmer majority as of today), he’ll be dealing with more than a few Republican defectors. Truth is, the electoral audit may fall down on its way out of the gate.
But it remains a solid move, pressed by the best man for the job. Despite the long odds, I’m behind it.
Finally today, a bit of navel-gazing. Early this morning I posted a “Flashback,” something I’d done only a couple of times before. Previously I’d recycled my own social media posts, but today I excepted John Galt’s classic speech from Atlas Shrugged.
That triggered something. I poured myself another cup of coffee, closed my office door and over the next two hours created another six — various authors, philosophers and public figures. I had more in mind but stopped there for now.
They’re all “in the can,” so to speak, ready to go. I’ll be posting them one-by one as the spirit moves me. Stay tuned.
One more thing — if you find and read Ubi Libertas blog posts on my social-media pages, do me a favor and click on the link. You’ll often find content and images on the blog that don’t make it over to Facebook, Parler or whatever.
Besides, clicks make my day.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath