The fundamental right to determine what is best for you and your family when it comes to health care is a core American principle. That principle began when our Founding Fathers issued the Declaration of Independence in which they stated, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Our Founders ensconced that principle of self-determination, including over our medical freedom, in the Ninth Amendment by expressly declaring that “[t]he enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people” along with the companion statement in the Tenth Amendment that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The punchline:
(1) We possess rights that preceded the creation of the federal government.
(2) We gave the federal government limited express powers as written.
(3) The rights listed aren’t our only rights.
(4) All other powers we are keeping, including the power to determine what is best for our health.
In 2020, Governor Mike DeWine and Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted, mesmerized by the Wormtongue-like whispers of the progressive and unelected Amy Acton, shutdown Ohio. They severely shutdown our businesses, our schools, and our houses of worship. They mandated useless and harmful masks, social distancing, and other crushing measures that prevented loved ones from being with family members and friends as they passed from this world to a better place. They wasted millions of tax dollars on their harebrained “vax-a-million” lottery aimed at coercing Ohioans to get a largely untested shot that wasn’t a vaccine, but little more than a pre-therapeutic that at best lessened symptoms. Unlike with polio, if you got the shot and all the boosters, you still got the virus and, in some cases, deadly or damaging side effects from the shot. They drove up government dependency just like the most left-wing Democrats would have done in their shoes, as Ohio’s Medicaid rolls exploded by 640,210 people. They caused the unnecessary delay of medical treatment that has led to worse medical outcomes, including death, for many Ohioans. Through all of these actions, they greatly increased our distrust in government and undermined longstanding faith in actual vaccines. In a ranking of states comparing the number of restrictions, the DeWine-Husted shutdown was ranked 29th for its severity.
The DeWine-Husted shutdown did enormous damage to Ohio, its citizens, and its businesses. It took Ohio 3.3 years to finally claw back all of the jobs lost from the shutdown—we’ve only added 22,000 jobs since 2019. Our kids will never catch up on the educational losses suffered during the DeWine-Husted shutdown, especially Ohio's most vulnerable kids already at the back of the pack. A generation of Ohioans are now perpetually behind the curve, especially compared to kids in other states that didn’t shutdown as severely or opened up far more rapidly. The destruction it did to the physical and mental health of millions of Ohioans, some of whom ended their suffering via suicide, is enormous and ongoing. Many Ohioans have to live with the fact they never got the chance to say goodbye…and never will.
One would think this trail of demolition created by extreme government overreach would elicit an apology from DeWine and Husted. A “mea culpa, mea culpa, maxima mea culpa” for listening to Acton’s bad advice that crushed our private sector, eviscerated the education of our kids, mandated useless masks, and caused countless other harms. But, no apology is forthcoming. As the video above shows, so convinced of his righteousness due to history’s worst case of tone deafness, Husted had the audacity to tell a giant crowd of freedom lovers that they should mask up and was annoyed they dared to boo him as he angrily shouted back, “I get it,” which he most certainly did not “get,” as he continued on cluelessly with his lecture on masking (pro tip: pushing a Donald Trump mask doesn’t make the mask mandate less offensive to our liberty).
Not surprisingly, with the 2024 presidential election coming around the corner, we are being told of a new strain of the virus that will require more masking, shots, and shutdowns (and last minute free-for-all voting changes). Joe Biden and his fellow left-wing travelers are already talking mandates. Given their past actions and failure to acknowledge their errors, we must be vigilant to fight any attempt by the DeWine-Husted Administration to again render Ohio a pandemic wasteland. To paraphrase from one of the greatest scenes in movie history when Gandalf faced the Balrog in the Mines of Moria, “THAT SHALL NOT PASS!!!” Let me assure you, I will do everything in my power to oppose any effort by DeWine and Husted to do anything other than allow Ohioans to decide for themselves what is best. I trust my fellow Ohioans to take whatever precautions they deem necessary to protect their elderly kin, their kids, and other vulnerable populations and to do so respectfully.
I for one have little doubt that the Chinese government will unleash another virus on the West (or one is being slipped across the porous Southern Border as I write), so we all must be ready for it and ensure our leaders respect our freedoms and right to determine for ourselves and our families what is best. I will never shutdown Ohio, force you to wear masks, crush your kids’ educations, or violate your medical freedom. My feet remain (and always have been) firmly planted on the foundation of freedom forged by our Founding Fathers literally with their blood, sweat, personal fortunes, and tears.
ICYMI, this week on the Bruce Hooley Show we discussed whether Joe Biden will remain a 2024 presidential candidate, Ohio’s unremarkable new jobs “record," and the need to more aggressively tackle crime in our state.
P.S. In follow-up to my previous note about our grassroots effort to stop forty-four members of the Republican State Central Committee from taking away the right of Republican primary voters to choose their candidates, I wanted to point out an obvious and, I believe, damning fact. Namely, the unequivocal fact that the Republican National Committee DOES NOT endorse presidential candidates under any condition, but allows Republican primary and caucus voters in all fifty states to decide which candidate is the Republican Presidential Nominee. This extreme tyranny of the minority practice simply needs to end in Ohio when there are two or more viable candidates so Ohioans have the sole power to decide who wins via their votes. We have an eighty-eight county primary where voters get to decide. Their votes should not be driven by the decision of forty-four people. Rigging the system like Hillary Clinton and her operatives within the Democratic National Committee did against Bernie Sanders is NOT the model Republicans in Ohio should emulate.
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