Anthony Fauci, the public health bureaucrat who became the face of America’s botched COVID-19 response, testified this week on Capitol Hill. Except Fauci actually didn’t testify: In an astonishing act of hubris and disdain for the countless Americans who bore the brunt of tyrannical COVID-era “Faucism,” the mad doctor invoked the Fifth Amendment well over 100 times.

It’s an unprecedented defiance of congressional will for a man who has already received a sweeping presidential pardon. Congress would do well to vote to hold Fauci in contempt.

Wednesday’s intense senatorial standoff followed Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) earlier release of damning excerpts of Fauci’s diary. Those excerpts revealed a man obsessed with his burgeoning self-image. Fauci also harbored grave private doubts about many key COVID-era disputes, such as the virus’s hotly contested origins, on which the longtime National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director otherwise projected a sense of confidence to a wary public.

In short, this past week painted a vivid James Bond villain-like picture of the power-hungry “elf” who personified COVID hell for so many.

In lecturing Americans to shut up and simply “trust the science,” Fauci committed the fallacy of scientism: He conflated science, or “science,” for the public good that statesmen are tasked with securing. Moreover, Fauci’s one-man reign of COVID-era biomedical terror served as a capstone on the century-long administrative state project of empowering would-be elites in Washington, D.C., over the judgments of the people.

Thankfully, not every American was equally subjected to Fauci’s overweening, politically expedient and often-changing dictates. We have our Founders to thank for that: Federalism mitigated the burdens of Faucism for the many Americans fortunate enough to live in states whose political leadership defied prevailing COVID-era biomedical despotism.

I would know: I moved to Florida in 2021 in no small part due to the way Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) handled COVID-19.

DeSantis, alongside Republican leaders in the Florida Legislature, acted in heroic fashion during COVID. At a time when white coat tyranny raged and most Americans deferred to those who spoke in the name of “science,” DeSantis did the reading himself and concluded that the dissenters from groupthink orthodoxy, such as Great Barrington Declaration authors Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, were right: COVID-19 did not necessitate the draconian policy responses demanded by the biomedical clerisy.

Accordingly, Florida under DeSantis fully opened its restaurants, bars and beaches in 2020, well before the feds said it was prudent to do so. Florida under DeSantis mandated that schools had to be open for in-person schooling in fall 2020. Florida under DeSantis blocked local governments, schools and private businesses from imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates in fall 2021.

More than any other state during the COVID era, Florida was freer and more open. For this, Fauci called DeSantis a “complete disgrace” in his now-exposed diary.

But the joke is on Fauci. During the core COVID years of 2020-2022, the Faucian nemesis Sunshine State had an age-adjusted COVID mortality rate that ranked 31st in the nation. That’s well above average. Notably, many leading blue states that implemented harsh lockdowns and school closures, such as New York and New Jersey, fared considerably worse.

Americans voted with their feet too: Florida recorded the largest annual net in-migration between July 2020 and July 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Florida, the once-iconic swing state that decided the 2000 presidential election by 537 votes, now boasts a Republican governor who won reelection by 19.4% and a Republican supermajority in both houses of its state legislature.

None of this would have happened had Florida not assembled its own medical team and ignored Fauci and the feds. And Florida didn’t just vindicate itself with the voters and the science (if not the “science”). It also vindicated the Founders’ vision of federalism.

One-size-fits-all bureaucratic governance from the nation’s capital is incompatible with American constitutionalism and the American way of life. As James Madison put it in The Federalist No. 45: “The powers … which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” Justice Louis D. Brandeis put it memorably in a 1932 Supreme Court dissent: “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.”

That’s exactly what Florida under DeSantis did.

As for Fauci? He’s been reduced to ham-fisted legal stunts and temper tantrums. Hopefully he soon takes those pathetic tantrums to prison.

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