The Terror of Freedom

On Thursday morning, RedState reporter Nick Arama alerted us to a giant fail of a propaganda video against the state of Florida. That’s right…the entire state. The ad positions Florida as a state modeled after the horror movie “The Purge” (and all its sequels) and uses dystopian images intercut with hysterical news reports of COVID numbers and mask bans. It includes clips of Governor Ron DeSantis (drenched in the dystopian color schemes of darkened, washed-out blues and grays) asserting that Floridians can make their own health decisions.

Terrifying.

This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. pic.twitter.com/oC0YRpc3zK

— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) September 30, 2021

To the freedom-oriented, the ad comes off as a glowing advertisement for Florida life. The ad itself was commissioned by a group called Remove Ron, headed by lawyer Daniel Uhlfelder and sponsored by Act Blue. Apparently Uhlfelder is frightened by the ideas of freedom and bodily autonomy, and sees that as a reason to remove the governor. We wouldn’t want people making decisions for themselves, would we? Look at what too many do with that type of freedom — start businesses, attend school, travel, go to amusement parks, infuse the economy with their dollars, go to *gasp* sporting events where they do incredibly dangerous things like cheer and yell. Responsible Americans like Uhlfelder want to make sure such heinous acts don’t continue to flourish.

Making your own choices? Disgusting.

But that really is what this is all about, isn’t it? A response from DeSantis’ Press Secretary Christina Pushaw succinctly sums up the real problem progressives are having with this virus, vaccine, and the varying responses of Americans.

Lol. Do Democrats genuinely find it terrifying to make their own decisions?

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 (@ChristinaPushaw) September 30, 2021

That’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it?

Cancel culture isn’t just a tactic of progressive meanies trying to dunk on the rest of us. It is the outcropping of a “culture of perfection” that ironically began as a rejection of the “culture of perfection” of post-WWII America. My parents belonged to that era. Boomers decided they didn’t want their parents’ rules. They burned their bras, got on The Pill, and told everyone they were going to free America — free love, free sex, free drugs. Freedom…but really they just meant the freedom to be like them. To choose another path became sinful, and now we hold people to the same standards of perfection as those awful parents of Boomers did…just from the other side of the ideological spectrum.

Freedom cannot thrive if it does not come with a moral baseline. If there is no standard-bearer to look toward, we cannot help but be sucked into sin.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. – President John Adams

I love that quote from one of our greatest leaders. Adams’ point stands today — freedom is based on the notion that every human is endowed with God-given rights that cannot be usurped by man. Human rights can only be protected by a society that believes they are not the arbiters of human rights. If you can’t understand the concept of Original Sin (or at least the non-religious notion that humans are not naturally inclined towards goodness to one another), then you can’t understand that humans will always lurch towards bondage. It’s in our DNA.

The notion that a Being greater than ourselves is the only One who can make or break, so to speak, is one boundary that keeps us from infringing on the freedoms of one another. Where God is absent (even among those who pretend to speak for God but in reality reject His commandments), the human instinct to enslave will blossom. We will make ourselves the judges of who may enjoy the luxury of independent thought and who will pay the price for engaging in such without permission.

Pushaw’s sarcastic tweet has a disturbing dose of reality embedded within.

Progressive liberals are terrified of people making their own choices. They have been so neutered by the culture of perfection that they can’t trust themselves to make the right decisions for their own lives. They need someone to make their choices for them, lest they make the wrong one and find themselves on the wrong end of the perfection scale. If they can’t trust themselves to make the right choices, then they sure as hell can’t trust the rest of us.

But it isn’t just about progressives being terrified of choices. What they are most afraid of is consequences…rather, the responsibility of consequences. The Boomers gave us the “participation trophy” culture, and now we have raised an entire generation of entitled Americans who cannot conceive of living out the consequences of their own decisions.

“But Kira, when a person chooses not to get vaccinated for COVID or not to wear a mask, they are making my health decisions for me! Why can’t you see that????”

Why do your “choices” always depend on someone else’s choices? This is the very crux of freedom — if you don’t like the choices others are making, you can respond with choices of your own that protect you from that.

If you feel threatened by those who choose not to wear masks in public, you have the right to choose to stay home and order your food and groceries, and catch up on Tiger King before the next season airs.

If you feel threatened by those who choose not to receive a COVID vaccination, then you have the right to choose not to go anywhere until every single human has been vaccinated. If you don’t trust what’s lurking out there in public, the sensible thing to do is stay out of the public square.

If you feel threatened by schools that eschew mask mandates in favor of letting children breathe freely, you have the right to homeschool your child or move to a district that has a mask mandate or pay for private school or simply disappear to your off-the-grid compound in the middle of the woods to conduct your private schooling every day, after kids do Armageddon drills.

I think these would all be dumb choices, but they are yours to make and that is the point.

Pushaw is absolutely correct. Progressive liberals aren’t terrified of COVID or Trump or pro-lifers or whatever boogeyman of the day they’ve dreamt up. They are terrified of making choices and thus can’t imagine a world in which anyone should be free to do so.

Keep that in mind as this battle rages on. It isn’t about COVID. When COVID has disappeared from the public psyche, it will be something else. We are in a battle not for vaccines, but for freedom itself.

Do not grow weary.