In this episode of Coronavirus Tyranny II: The Sequel, Joe Biden is making vaccine mandates for all and mask mandates for kids two of his top priorities, even though evidence supporting these actions simply doesn’t exist.
When Biden was asked two weeks ago about his constitutional authority to override state governments and issue mask mandates for kids before returning to school, he admitted that no such power existed:
Asked whether he possesses the authority to impose a national mask mandate on every school in the nation, President Joe Biden offered up a truly chilling answer. “I don’t believe that I do thus far,” he said, speaking from the East Room of the White House. “We’re checking that.” (emphasis mine)
But, with his pen and phone ever at the ready and with momentum on his side after ignoring the Constitution earlier this month to issue eviction moratorium — an order under appeal and soon to be heard by the Supreme Court — Biden took action on the mask mandate issue.
Responding to red state governors who had issued a ban on mask mandates last week — not masks, just mask mandates — Biden threatened to take “legal action” against any state issuing such a ban:
“Unfortunately, as we’ve seen throughout this pandemic, some politicians are trying to turn public safety measures — that is, children wearing masks in school — into political disputes for their own political gain. Some are even trying to take power away from local educators by banning masks in school. They’re setting a dangerous tone.
“The intimidation and the threats we’re seeing across the country are wrong. They’re unacceptable.
“And I’ve said before, this isn’t about politics. It’s about keeping our children safe. This is about taking on the virus together, united.
“And that’s why, today, I am directing the Secretary of Education — an educator himself — to take additional steps to protect our children. This includes using all of his oversight authorities and legal actions, if appropriate, against governors who are trying to block and intimidate local school officials and educators.” (emphasis mine)
Apparently, when it comes to mask mandates for kids, Biden doesn’t need evidence to support his actions any more than he needs the Constitution (via Reason.com):
Biden’s framing implies that school officials are indisputably “protecting our children” by forcing them to cover their faces all day and that anyone who suggests otherwise is motivated only by crass partisan motives. Yet the evidence that the public health benefits of “universal masking” in K-12 schools outweigh its costs is far less impressive than the president suggests.
Other governments seem to recognize that fact. As David Zweig notes in New York magazine, “many of America’s peer nations around the world—including the U.K., Ireland, all of Scandinavia, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy—have exempted kids, with varying age cutoffs, from wearing masks in classrooms” without experiencing more school-related COVID-19 outbreaks than the U.S. has seen.
The latest guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), by contrast, recommends that everyone, regardless of age or vaccination status, wear face masks in K‒12 schools. But the studies the CDC cites to justify that stance generally were not designed to test the effectiveness of mask mandates.
Left out of Biden’s mask mandates for kids is this inconvenient truth: The CDC’s “current best estimate” of the infection fatality rate among people younger than 18 is 0.002 percent. (emphasis mine)
Meanwhile, the consequences of mask mandates for kids in school come with spiritual, physical and psychological impacts that include: daylong discomfort and stress, obstructed breathing and vision (thanks to fogged eyeglasses), and interference with communication, learning, and social interaction.
I’ve mentioned in the past how this kind of unconstitutional executive action is something Joe Biden is very familiar with, having spent eight years under the tutelage of Barack Obama.
In an statement made by Biden earlier this month and directed at governors who disagree with mask mandates, he attempted to justify his disregard of the Constitution and his decision to issue them anyway despite the lack of evidence supporting them.
“When I suggest that people, in zones where there is a high risk, wear the masks like you all are doing, I’m told that government should get out of the way and not do that, they don’t have the authority to do that. And I find it interesting that some of the very people who are saying that, who hold government positions, are people who are threatening that if a school teacher asks a student if they’ve been vaccinated, or if a principal says that ‘everyone in my school should wear a mask,’ or the school board votes for it, that governor will nullify that.
“That governor has the authority to say you can’t do that. I find that totally counter-intuitive and quite frankly, disingenuous.”
I guess since the Founding Fathers forgot to put a “disingenuous” clause in the Constitution giving the president power to overrule governors, Joe Biden figures he can don his dictator cap and spread a little tyranny whenever the mood hits him.
Putting aside Biden’s obvious shredding of the Constitution and the destruction of our children for a moment, when coronavirus hysteria reared it’s head early last year, I expressed the concerns held by many conservatives that a government long desirous of turning America into a tyrannical, socialist state could use the so-called pandemic to permanently alter, if not outright eliminate, liberty.
Sadly for constitutional conservatives and other lovers of liberty, all signs point to the reality that tyranny and the end of liberty is much closer than we realize. We need look no further than Dictator Biden and his plan to continue the abuse of America’s children via his universal mask mandates for schools.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
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