In a baffling display of stupidity, rightwing publications across the internet are praising Texas Gov. Greg Abbott today for ending the COVID lockdowns and mask mandates in his state. When Republican leaders display moral cowardice and act just like Democrats, shouldn’t we be calling them out on it? Some are even talking about Greg Abbott now being a contender for the 2024 Republican nomination for president if Trump doesn’t run for reelection. I’d say, “When hell freezes over,” but that might trigger all of the Green New Deal experts who are running the Texas power grid these days.

Back when COVID first hit America’s shores, tons of people got scared. We’d been seeing the fake videos out of China for weeks at that point, and we thought COVID was a serious disease that could kill even relatively young, healthy people. Remember all those videos of Chinese people in their 20s collapsing in the streets in Wuhan? Yeah, those were obviously all fake. We know that now, because the number of people under the age of 50 that are actually dying from COVID is statistically near zero. China faked us out and then a bunch of terrible governors – Democrats and Republicans – did the rest of the dirty work for China.

Out of an abundance of caution and fear, “we the people” consented to a plan that I thought was crazy at the time. I even wrote that it was crazy at the time. The plan was called “10 Days to Flatten the Curve.” Remember that? You should remember it, since we’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of it. A lot of states are still under mask mandates and business shutdowns, because “10 Days” for those governors was actually “Forever and Ever Because I Am a Psychopath.”

We trusted the people in charge of our states with that insane 10-day shutdown. We never consented to continued lockdowns that would destroy thousands of small businesses, cause a huge spike in 10-year-old suicides and drive fentanyl overdose rates through the roof. We did not consent to this misery in Republican- or Democrat-controlled states. They did it to us anyway and they’re still doing it to us in a lot of states.

Greg Abbott had access to the exact same science that Gov. Kristi Noem in South Dakota and Vice President Ron DeSan—whoops. Got ahead of myself a little bit there. I meant to say Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida.

But Abbott put his state through the same rollercoaster as the Nursing Home Killer governor of New York, Governor Crazy-Eyes in Michigan, and Governor Nancy Pelosi’s Nephew in California. Now Abbott is finally – a freaking year later – restoring rights to his citizens that he never had authority to take away in the first place. Whoopee.

“Thanks for no longer clubbing me with that big stick! You’re awesome!”

Government has no authority to frivolously shut down small businesses – even in a “public health emergency.” The Supreme Court has always consistently ruled that under the Privileges or Immunities clause of the 14^th Amendment (yeah, one of the anti-slavery amendments), government cannot prevent someone from pursuing the trade of their choice (so long as that “trade” is not a government job or something illegal). To do so is to violate a man or woman’s right to that whole “pursuit of happiness” thing in the Declaration of Independence.

In other words, the Supreme Court has ruled multiple times over the years that government shutting down your small business is absolutely no different than denying employment to a black person because of their skin color. And these governors did it anyway. I’m surprised that no enterprising attorney has had the guts to sue their state government for a 14^th Amendment violation yet over these lockdowns.

I’m also surprised that so many people have gone along with it. And I’ve said this before in the past year: God bless all of the black-market entrepreneurs who have continued your pursuit of happiness in the face of these tyrants. You’re on the right side of history and the law on this one.

As for Texas Governor Greg Abbott, I refuse to praise the guy. 50 weeks to flatten the curve! No. No thanks. He belongs on the same list as Andrew Cuomo and Gretchen Whitmer as far as I’m concerned.