Immigrationists love to say “Nobody is illegal.” Perhaps not, in spirit, because illegals are apparently preferred now. The latest example is that while illegal aliens are being released into our country’s interior without COVID tests — necessary for people legally entering these United States via airplane — the Biden administration is considering placing travel restriction on certain states, including Florida.
The rationale (pretext?) behind it is that the COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7 is more prevalent in some states, Florida among them. The real reason, say some observers, is that the Sunshine State is bucking leftists’ agenda and inspiring their envy.
Reporting on this last night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson called Florida “one of the last truly free states” and pointed out that it has resisted the onerous coronavirus lockdown restrictions that have ravaged so many lives across the nation.
Despite this, “Florida has performed far better than states that shut down completely and forced people to isolate completely, states like New York and New Jersey,” noted Carlson. “Last summer, at the height of the pandemic, NY and NJ had five times the number of coronavirus deaths on a per capita basis — and far more people live in Florida than in NY or NJ.”
The commentator then mentioned the revelations that the Governor Andrew Cuomo administration lied about New York’s SARS-CoV-2 numbers for political reasons; for example, the Empire State government had recklessly sent 9,000 COVID-positive patients to nursing homes, twice the previously disclosed number.
Yet it isn’t Killer Cuomo in the crosshairs, but the Sunshine State and its Governor Ron DeSantis. This is not, however, merely because the latter is a Republican while New York is a Democrat bastion. Rather, it’s that “Florida proves that people don’t need to give up their rights as Americans just because some bureaucrat demands they do, just because some career politician wants more power,” Carlson suggested.
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The host then proceeded to play video clips from left-wing media (i.e., almost all of it), including MSNBC’s Joy Reid, accusing DeSantis of being “dumb,” not caring about human life, and essentially saying he should be canceled.
Next Carlson cited a Miami Herald report that the Biden administration was considering domestic travel restrictions, “including on Florida,” and which quoted an anonymous White House official as saying, “This is a war and we’re at battle with the virus. War is messy and unpredictable, and all options are on the table.”
Aghast at the phraseology, Carlson pointed out that we’re talking here about “American citizens.” And, really, with Democrats behaving during Trump’s impeachment trial as if his figurative use of “fight” should be considered literal — even though they themselves have used the word likewise — what should we now conclude? Is the White House official implying with this martial talk that Miami could be nuked?
Clearly, the Biden administration is singling out certain states for punishment, opined Carlson, before playing clips of DeSantis calling the suggestion unconstitutional and promising pushback. In fact, Democrat stronghold California is faring worse virus-wise than Florida but isn’t in White House crosshairs, according to Carlson (video below).
Carlson was also joined last night by Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who made some interesting points. He said (as transcribed on his Senate website):
It’s actually quite ironic. The day after Donald Trump imposed the China travel ban, Joe Biden accused him of xenophobia. Then in March he tweeted out that travel bans anywhere in the world do not work. But now, he wants to impose them on American citizens. Tonight if you arrive at the U.S. southern border with a child, you will be allowed entry to the country, [sic] you will be allowed to stay here pending an asylum trial or hearing that you may never show up for.
But if you are an American citizen living in Florida that wants to travel, they’re going to put some form of restriction in your way. It’s clearly unconstitutional. We should also pass a law here making clear this is not within the power of an administration to do. You can’t just stand in the way of the ability of Americans to travel freely in their country for something that, by the way, is not supported by the science.
I think they are trying to punish Florida. I think they’re embarrassed by what Florida has done. Florida has embarrassed California. Florida has embarrassed New York. It hosted a Super Bowl with actual people in the stands. The predictions about Florida didn’t come true. And they are like, we can’t let this stand, we have to come up with something. I honestly think there is an element of that that involves punishment, I really do.
Quite plausible, of course. But note also that we’re witnessing an imposition of unreality typical of tyrannical regimes.
As governments gain power, ideology increasingly takes precedence over science and the leaders’ will begins to trump that of the people, to whom officials are ever-less answerable. Thus could the Soviet Union make Lysenkoism — proposing the heritability of acquired traits (e.g., a man who loses an arm could have a one-armed son) — official government “science” till 1964. Dissent from it got sane biologists sent to gulags and, sometimes, executed.
This absolute power also contributed to the USSR’s disastrous losses during the “Winter War” against tiny Finland in 1939-’40. Joseph Stalin had “canceled” competent military officers, you see, replacing them with ideologically conforming communist stooges.
So English philosopher Herbert Spencer’s observation that the “ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools” does, of course, apply to leaders as well.
And foolishness increasingly defines our leaders. Some of them claim to be of the “party of science” but are only party to science fiction. Hence do they insist that a boy can be a girl, a baby can be as a boil — and a state leading in disease mitigation can be a relative Typhoid Mary.
Unfortunately for us, while you can deny reality, reality can in turn deny you — life. Not that our politician fiction writers care.
