“The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism.” —George Washington (1796)

It seems like several years have passed since March of 2020, when Donald Trump authorized Anthony Fauci to make a national declaration of “15 days to flatten the curve” in order to get ahead of the ChiCom Virus pandemic. Now, 18 months into the COVID pandemic of fear, the Beltway Democrats and their entrenched bubble bureaucrats are still doing what they do best — attempting to increase the power of the state, thus increasing their own power and control. Joe Biden’s cadre is ramping up evermore edicts to “flatten the curve” of infection spread and hospitalizations, to the detriment of ever attaining herd immunity, as well as to the great peril of American Liberty.

For all of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy achievements during his first three years in office, his decision to empower Fauci unwound much of that good, and his presidency.

Consequently, never letting a “good crisis” go to waste, the Democrats’ “kinder, gentler” iteration of statist totalitarianism is on the march.

During Ronald Reagan’s first and second terms, I traveled to the Soviet Union doing “opposition research.” Once during those travels, I was placed under house arrest, which served to sharpen my irrevocable impression of life for the Russian people under a tyrannical socialist regime. In a subsequent trip under the George H.W. Bush administration, I got to visit Moscow central jail as a “guest” of the regime, which further sharpened both my appreciation for Liberty and unmitigated contempt for statist tyrants.

Among my other impressions from travels to the former Soviet Union and to its oligarchical successor, the Russian (Putin) Federation, was the requirement of passports and permission papers in order to travel, much as we would associate with traveling to other countries. Indeed, credentials of privilege were also required to walk into certain hotels, restaurants, bars, and other venues reserved for the government elite, those politicos and their appointees who were carted about in limousines while the common people of the “revolution” they ostensibly represented lived in relative poverty.

Fast-forward to the masking and distancing mandates implemented since March of last year, and now to Biden’s vaccination mandates. These have created a “soft totalitarianism” across America, a kinder, gentler Bolshevism. What the Left would like most is to exercise as much control over your life as the Soviets did after the Bolshevik revolution. Democrats have an insatiable appetite for power and control, which is rooted in their pathology.

Joe Biden and his administration are in a free fall, both in terms of his grossly failed policies and his public approval.

Biden’s open-border policies are a disaster. His big socialist spending plan is irreconcilable amid surging inflation. The Democrats’ policies, which pay people not to work, have created a jobs crisis that is crushing small businesses and service industries — further empowering the BIG corporations that bow to the Left. And most recently, Biden’s catastrophically failed surrender and retreat from Afghanistan has both empowered our near-peer adversaries (China and Russia) while inviting another 9/11 Islamist attack on our nation.

But DC Demos are insulated from these realities that influence all American lives nationwide.

Amid this surreal transformation of our nation, while the CDC is busy ensuring its communications are inclusive and equitable, Biden is inching ever closer to federal mandates for vaccinations.

As it turns out, masking mandates were the proving grounds for how much government control could be exercised over the populace regarding vaccinations — this despite the abundant scientific evidence challenging the effectiveness of masks. Consequently, the administration has created a colossal trust deficit.

But Biden stumbles on.

By way of disclaimer, I am not opposed to vaccinations, including CV19 vaccinations, especially for those over 60 and anyone with substantial comorbidity factors. I take an annual flu vaccination, and this has, in part, assured that I have not missed a day of work in a decade.

But I am adamantly opposed to mandatory masking and vaccination by government diktat. That being said, if a private business wants me to wear a shirt, shoes, and mask in their establishment, that is their prerogative. I can choose to comply or take my business elsewhere. But a private business requiring its employees to vaccinate? I believe this violates a whole list of ethical considerations — and potentially introduces a slippery slope. That’s especially true since neither the government nor corporate mandates give adequate consideration to the higher protection afforded by natural immunity.

The government’s masking and distancing mandates, and now Biden’s federal vaccination mandates, are clearly in violation of constitutional limits on the central government. But the administration is using its pandemic of panic and fear to mask its mandates.

Let’s take a walk down memory lane — something Biden hasn’t been able to do for years — and review what he said about government-mandated vaccinations, and what his leftist Beltway bureaucrats have said.

A year ago, Anthony Fauci insisted that national vaccine mandates would be “encroaching upon a person’s freedom to make their own choice of their own health.” He later reiterated this point, adding: “I don’t think you will ever see a mandating of vaccine, particularly for the general public. You would never mandate, at least I do not think you would. I would be pretty surprised if you mandated it for any element of the general public.”

Last December, Fauci said, “I doubt very seriously if it will be a central federally government mandated vaccination.”

That same month, then-President-elect Biden declared that he would not impose vaccine mandates: “I don’t think [the vaccine] should be mandatory. I wouldn’t demand it to be mandatory.”

In January, Fauci said there would not be a federal vaccine mandate because “we almost never mandate things federally” in regard to health.

In March, Biden’s spokesperson Jen Psaki said of both a central government database for vaccination passports and mandates: “There are a couple of key principles that we are working from. One, there will be no universal federal vaccinations database, and no federal mandate requiring that everyone receive a single vaccination credential.”

In April, Fauci said again that a vaccine is “not gonna be mandated from the federal government.”

That month, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “We cannot require someone to be vaccinated.”

In May, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said, “We’re not counting on vaccine mandates at all” and that vaccine mandates would never be “federally driven,” adding, “We’re not planning any vaccine mandates.”

Psaki reiterated that “we are not currently considering federal mandates” for vaccines and that she doesn’t not “anticipate that we would be putting [vaccine] requirements” on the private sector.

In July, Fauci said that it is “extremely unlikely” that there will be a “central federal mandate for vaccines.”

The CDC’s Walensky reiterated: “To clarify: There will be no nationwide mandate. … There will be no federal mandate.”

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said “you won’t see” a federal vaccine mandate because “this is a decision that historically has not come from the federal government.” Two weeks later, Murthy said vaccine mandates “are decisions that the federal government is not going to make.”

Psaki then went to the mat against vaccine passports and any question that Biden would implement mandates: “Let me be very clear on this … the government is not now, nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a [vaccination] credential. There will be no federal vaccinations database, and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential. As these tools are being considered by the private and non profit sectors, our [federal government] interest is very simple, which is that American’s privacy and rights should be protected so that these systems are not used against people unfairly. That’s not the role of the federal government.”

She said again: “Can we mandate vaccines across the country? No, that’s not a role that the federal government, I think, even has the power to make.”

In August, Fauci said, “You’re not going to see a central [vaccine] mandate coming from the federal government.” He added that it is “no secret that I feel that we should not have central mandates from the federal government.”

The same week, the Associated Press reported that vaccine passports were being discussed: “Still, while more severe measures — such as mandating vaccines for interstate travel or changing how the federal government reimburses treatment for those who are unvaccinated and become ill with COVID-19 — have been discussed, the administration worried that they would be too polarizing for the moment.”

A week later, endeavoring to pivot from his Afghanistan debacle, Biden held a press conference to announce that the federal government would be mandating vaccinations, the first requirements being for employers of 100 or more people.

The point of walking through all these promises about mandates and medical passports is that none of these political prevaricators can be trusted. Their sole interest and focus is the empowerment of the state and, thus, their own empowerment.

Despite the fact that the ostensible justification for vaccine passports is falling apart, expect Biden to expand his vaccination mandates.

However, it is unlikely the mandates will hold up under judicial review.

As Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) observed: “They want to change the topic from Afghanistan. It’s why Biden issued this completely illegal and unconstitutional vaccine mandate, because he wanted to change the topic from the disaster in Afghanistan. The vaccine mandate is going to be struck down in court. They know that. But the president is defying the law because he wanted the press to start defending him and stop talking about the disasters in Afghanistan. And he’s counting on a bunch of big businesses, in particular, forcing their employees to comply before the matter is ever adjudicated and before the order is struck down.”

Leftist strongholds including California and New York are already implementing mandates for vaccine passports in order to enter private businesses. You can download your medical information to an official state app, or just present your federally issued CDC vaccination card — what Psaki described as “a single vaccination credential” that you would not have to carry. (Those cards, by the way, are now being counterfeited wholesale.)

What’s next, something much more radical, like requiring identification to vote?

Of course, all those rules are for you, not them.

Biden already exempted Congress from compliance with his vax mandate, and then exempted more than 600,000 postal workers, who could be super-spreaders. The same week he gifted more than two million federal employees an “emergency raise,” a.k.a. “hush money.”

And across the country, another Demo mayor joined the long list of pandemic rule hypocrites. San Francisco’s London Breed was caught violating her indoor masking mandate, but explained, “I got up and started dancing because I was feeling the spirit and I wasn’t thinking about a mask.”

Well, I mean, if it was OK for Gov. Newsom, it must be OK for Madame Breed.

Preparing for the Biden mandates to get more oppressive, many state governments are preparing to challenge Biden’s mandates. Even some leftist publications, including The Atlantic, are daring to criticize Biden’s mandates, suggesting that he’s indifferent to the political fallout. But Fauci claims “the president is being somewhat moderate in his demand.”

So, it’s “moderate” to require people to inject a vaccine into their body or else lose their job?

Meanwhile, though any visitors to the U.S. from Europe must have their vaccination passport to enter, Biden has invited the greatest influx of illegal aliens across our southern border at the fastest pace in history — none of whom have actual passports, and none of whom are required to be vaccinated.

As I have written previously, predictably and inevitably, the central government’s response to the ChiCom Virus pandemic under the now-authoritarian control of Biden and Fauci has devolved into mandates that are predicated on 10% science and 90% power accumulation.

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776

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