For how long can you trust a politician to stick to his commitment to defend freedom? In the case of Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, it looks like three months max. After signing into law on April 29 legislation prohibiting mask mandates by state and local governments in Arkansas, Hutchinson on Thursday, July 29, declared he intends to call a special session of the state legislature, likely to occur next week, for the purpose of exempting kindergarten through 12th grade public schools from the statute’s mask mandate prohibition.
Before Hutchinson was, in late April, against government mandating that people wear masks, he was all for it. Indeed, On July 16, 2020, Hutchison unilaterally imposed a statewide mask mandate via an executive order. The mask mandate then stayed in place for eight and a half months — until Hutchinson ended it on March 30 of this year. Then, a month later, this “sunshine patriot” was signing legislation banning state and local government mask mandates.
Why is Hutchinson now making the quick shift back from supporting freedom to supporting tyranny? He offers a popular excuse of people seeking to expand government power at the expense of freedom: it is for the children. Announcing his call for a special session to end the ban on mask mandates in government schools, Hutchinson said he is taking the action to help “the children in our school systems that are 12 and under that are not eligible to be vaccinated.”
Never mind that children are at nearly zero risk of death or major sickness from coronavirus, that masks are known to cause health problems but have not been established to provide net protection against the spread of coronavirus, that the rushed into production and distribution experimental coronavirus vaccines — some of which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of the term — carry significant risks, that the shots are turning out to be ineffective in protecting against coronavirus, and that there was no reason to expect back in April that children less than 12 years old would be able to receive experimental coronavirus vaccine shots before the beginning of the fall of 2021 school semester. Hutchinson said the magic words that he is acting for the children, so we are all supposed to praise him for his humanitarianism.
Don’t give Hutchinson credit for his dumb excuse. Hutchinson is acting tyrannically, as he has through the coronavirus panic. It’s as simple as that.
