Washington, DC…Governor Gavin Newsom has come under blistering attack for partying at one of the few restaurants he has not yet forced out of business, defying his own idiotic Covid edicts. He should be praised. He was doing what we all used to do in a free society: make our own decisions over what risks we are willing to run and what precautions we are willing to take according to our own circumstances to protect our own health.

Yes, Covid is a nasty bug. A quarter of a million Americans have died while having it. But it isn’t the Bubonic Plague. The CDC’s best estimate is that the recovery rate for those under age 49 is 99.92 percent. Even for those over 70, the survival rate is 94.6 percent. Forty percent of the people who get it don’t even know they have it. Yet we have turned our society upside down – destroying countless businesses, throwing tens of millions into unemployment, robbing our children of their education and shredding our most cherished rights as Americans.

Governor Newsom’s night of partying should be a wake-up call to every American.

Every time we step outside our homes, the risks we face multiply. A free society assumes that its citizens are competent to assess those risks, balance them against the avoidance costs, and to manage their decisions in a generally responsible way. It’s called common sense, and is a necessary prerequisite for self-government and liberty.

The choices of an octogenarian with emphysema in New York might be very different from those of a healthy governor in California. Only a fool would claim the omniscience to make an informed judgment for every person in every circumstance in every community. Sadly, the crisis has revealed that fools abound in public office and that a fool with power can quickly become a petty tyrant.

Which brings us back to Governor Newsom. These government nannies love to tell us that they’re just following the science. What does the science tell us? It tells us that Covid poses virtually no risk to children but can be severe among the elderly. So, what did these lockdown leftists do? They closed all the schools and ordered infected patients into nursing homes!

The science tells us that outdoor transmissions of the virus are extremely rare and that 80 percent of infections occur in people’s homes. So what did these lockdown leftists do? They closed our beaches, parks and campgrounds and ordered people to stay at home!

The science tells us that obesity is a contributing factor to the severity of the disease. So what did these lockdown leftists do? They closed all the gyms and kept open the liquor stores!

These lockdowns haven’t saved lives. The states with the most stringent lockdowns generally have the highest mortality rates from Covid. Compare Utah and Colorado. Utah stayed open while next door, Colorado shut down. Utah currently has half the Covid mortality rate and 3/4 the unemployment rate. But the lockdowns have cost countless lives from suicides, drug and alcohol abuse domestic homicides, deferred health screening and treatment, poverty related deaths.

Recently, Governor Newsom demanded that restaurant diners replace their masks after every bite, but at the same time minimize the times they take them off. Obviously, this requires very big bites. Thanksgiving dinners are allowed in California, but only when they are held outside, guests are seated six feet apart, and they last no more than two hours. It’s all right to go inside to use the bathroom, but only if it is frequently sanitized. Otherwise, presumably you’ll just have to use the bushes. And for God’s sake – NO SINGING!

So let us not criticize Governor Newsom. Perhaps he has just offered us all deliverance from his own folly. Nor should we criticize the California legislators who ignored travel and quarantine restrictions to junket to Hawaii. Nor should we ridicule Speaker Pelosi for choosing not to wear a mask in a hair salon that was forced to close for the rest of us.

Good for them. They are demonstrating by their own actions the freedom that every American citizen should reclaim from these very same people. The governor should make his own decisions about running his own life. Perhaps now he and his ilk will stop telling the rest of us how to run ours.

Congressman McClintock represents California’s 4th Congressional District.

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