I guess it depends on who “we” are

Michael Dorf is a high falutin’ law professor, so it’s greatly to his credit that he doesn’t mince any words when describing Neil Gorsuch’s paranoid ranting about how the government’s COVID restrictions were the greatest and most indefensible restrictions on Freedom ™ in the history of Freedom ™:

Perhaps Justice Gorsuch didn’t directly cite the complaint in the case itself because it is, to use the technical legal term, batshit rightwing-nut crazy. It repeatedly refers to the Biden administration as “the Left.” In addition to complaining about the supposed pressure campaign to suppress anti-vax disinformation, it also complains about supposed suppression of (false) claims by Donald Trump and his allies about voter fraud. And it’s especially adamant about supposed suppression of anti-mask speech. . .

Near the end of Justice Gorsuch’s statement, he acknowledges that “decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate.” Yet nowhere in that statement does he say–and he apparently doesn’t think–that a pandemic caused by a novel virus that ended up killing over a million Americans and that sickened millions more was the sort of crisis calling for such decisive executive action. He refers to Americans’ overreactions to a “perceived threat,” implying (even if not coming right out and saying) that he thinks the perception with respect to COVID was inaccurate from the start. . . .

Justice Gorsuch’s statement terms the collection of orders comprising the US COVID response “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” That assertion echoes Justice Alito’s November 2020 speech at the Federalist Society national convention in which he called COVID-related government actions “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty,” adding: “We have never before seen restrictions as severe, extensive and prolonged as those experienced for most of 2020.”

I guess it depends on who “We” are. This is a country in which millions of human beings were lawfully enslaved their entire lives–including during peacetime. And while I do not deny that the COVID restrictions were indeed a very serious intrusion on liberty, it’s a little hard to take seriously paeans to liberty offered by Justices who enthusiastically nullified a nearly-fifty-year-old precedent recognizing the freedom not to be forced to endure the bodily burdens of pregnancy and birth.

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about the effect of the Covid epidemic in the USA, other than the million-plus dead people, and the millions of chronically seriously ill survivors, is how an imperfect but ultimately triumphant — via Operation Warp Speed — government response to the crisis has become the ultimate example to the right wing/Republican party of government tyranny and oppression.

The only thing the Trump administration got right in four years is now apparently the worst thing Trump did!

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took a swipe over the weekend at former President Donald Trump, playing off his accelerated push for a COVID-19 vaccine.

Addressing the Florida Family Policy Council on Saturday, DeSantis asserted that vaccine mandates were an egregious violation of individual rights.

“The way they weaponized these COVID vaxes was a massive incursion into our freedoms,” the governor said. “They wanted to deny people the right to put food on their table if they didn’t bend the knee and get a COVID shot that they may not have wanted and that many of them did not need.” . . .

“We can never allow ‘Warp Speed’ to trump informed consent in this country ever again,” DeSantis said, referring to the 45th president’s “Operation Warp Speed” vaccine development push.

There’s still a deadly viral epidemic in this country, and it’s not Covid-19.