By Jacob G. Hornberger | The Future of Freedom Foundation
During the entire Covid crisis, there were those who decried Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for recommending or mandating that people use masks and take the Covid vaccine.
At the state level, the same people condemned state officials for ordering lockdowns of businesses to prevent the spread of the Covid virus. They also criticized them for recommending or mandating the use of masks and the taking of the Covid vaccine.
That was where the exclusive focus of some of the Covid protestors was — on the people who they said were doing harm with their Covid recommendations and mandates.
What solution did some of those Covid protestors propose to all this?
At the federal level, some of them simply wanted Fauci fired and replaced with someone else — someone who was anti-vaccine, anti-mask, and anti-mandates.
At the state level, it was the same thing — put better, more enlightened people in charge of the healthcare agencies who would implement better Covid policies, i.e., ones that were anti-mask, anti-vaccine, and anti-mandate.
Of course, there was never any question about whether Covid orders and mandates emanating from either federal or state officials constituted a grave violation of freedom. But the problem is that some of those who were advocating that Fauci and other Covid officials be fired (and, some argued, criminally prosecuted) were never able to see that their solution wasn’t actually based on freedom but rather simply on temporary expediency. That’s because they couldn’t understand that when one has a governmental system in which officials are able to provide or regulate healthcare, the people who get into power are inevitably going to run things in a bad, anti-freedom way.
In other words, let’s assume that the Covid protestors got their way. Let’s assume that Fauci and all the people who worked for him got fired, jailed, and replaced. Let’s assume that the same thing happened at the state level. Who would all those people be replaced with? By people of the same mindsets — people who were going to do the same thing!
This is what some of the Covid protestors could never understand. They were living under a fantasy that the statists in government would appoint the protestors to run the government’s healthcare system. That was never going to happen.
The basic problem, which some of the Covid protestors could never see, is that some of them believe that government, both federal and state, should be involved in providing, running, and regulating healthcare. This is why we rarely, if ever, saw them calling for the elimination of the NIAFD or, for that matter, the FDA, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other federal healthcare agency. By the same token, we never saw some of them calling for the eradication of state healthcare agencies. Their exclusive focus was on getting rid of healthcare officials and replacing them with better, more enlightened ones.The fact is that some of the Covid protestors fervently believe that government, both federal and state, should be involved in providing and regulating healthcare. They just want “better people” to be appointed to exercise the federal and state healthcare powers.
What’s the problem with that mindset? It’s not freedom! Freedom is the eradication of government involvement in healthcare entirely. In other words, the separation of healthcare and the state, just as our ancestors separated church and state. By removing the power of government to provide or regulate healthcare, then the political issue of mandates, lockdowns, vaccines, and everything else relating to healthcare disintegrates and disappears.
Imagine if both federal and state governments wielded the power to provide and regulate religion. There would be the religion protestors, angrily denouncing government officials who were requiring people to attend Catholic Mass in some parts of the country. Their solution though would be: “We need to fire those religion criminals and replace them with Protestant officials.” They would not be able to see that that would not be a real solution at all, at least not from a freedom standpoint. Genuine freedom would require a separation of church and state, not a proposal based on getting better people into office to run the religion operations.
It’s the same with healthcare — the freedom solution is not to get “better people” into office to run the federal and state healthcare systems. The freedom solution is to get government out of the healthcare business entirely by separating healthcare and the state.
Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.
