This is a retrospective as we near the first anniversary of our progressive experience with SARS-CoV-2. Liberty-loving Americans looking ahead to the Biden administration should consider the past year to have been a previewing of coming attractions for progressive governance.

Imagine Dr. Anthony Fauci gaining an audience with President Ronald Reagan. After Dr. Fauci parroted statistics from Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London that 2.2 million Americans would die from Wuhan coronavirus infections unless a progressive fascist agenda were enacted shutting down non-essential businesses and placing all Americans under house arrest, President Reagan would have laughed and politely told Dr. Fauci to leave and close the door behind him. Mr. Reagan was educated in economics and loved our Constitution and Bill of Rights. He knew over-reaching government actions would cause harm and wouldn’t impact viral transmission. Mr. Reagan trusted customers to determine which businesses were and weren’t essential. It was inconceivable to place healthy, law-abiding citizens under virtual house arrest. President Reagan would urge the vulnerable to maintain appropriate isolation and those with infected symptoms to self-quarantine.

God bless him, but President Donald Trump isn’t ideological. He came into office to implement certain ideas. Paramount was undoing damage done to our country by Barack Obama over eight years. Unfortunately, when Drs. Fauci and Birx told President Trump the sky was falling, he was confounded by this curveball from left field. In March and through May, we discovered there are two Libertarians from Kentucky, but no conservatives in Washington, DC.

President Trump’s instincts failed him, and no help came from White House staff or Congress. There would be no debates, studies, or reflections to make considered decisions. Washington followed Rahm Emanuel’s advice, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Our political masters signed up to stampede American citizens.

So, what has been our experience? Without compensating owners, local, county, and state governments violated the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment by ordering non-essential businesses to close. Technocratic subjective criteria determine what is essential.

Effects of shutdowns and capacity limitations include damage or destruction of tens of thousands of businesses with millions of jobs lost. Middle-class size and wealth shrank, while dependency on government jumped. Typical of government actions, minorities were impacted disparately. They said, “We’re all in this together.” But politicians and staff weren’t laid off, nor did they suffer pay or benefits cuts.

Dissatisfied with only leveling the economy, progressives unleashed massive government intervention into markets. The Bernanke-Yellen-Powell recession of 2020 was triggered by the Wuhan virus, but the root cause was a credit bubbled fueled over years by the Federal Reserve.

No politician admonished the Federal Reserve for responsibility for the recession. Instead, they watched idly as Powell and the Fed re-inflated the credit bubble by lowering interest rates with unprecedented acquisition of both government and commercial debt instruments.

Interference in markets prevents businesses from going through bankruptcy and re-organizing, so they can shed bad management, bad debts, and become more viable employers. Low-interest rates obscure consequences for government debt accumulation. Loose money policy exacerbates wealth inequality because Fed policies benefit the wealthy investing in stocks and real estate.

In tandem, Congressional and White House profligate spending added trillions of dollars of debt. The system likely won’t collapse. Rather, it will increase further wealth inequality but reduce lower- and middle-class standards of living, provide fewer jobs in the private sector than would otherwise be available, lower real wages, and raise taxes.

In July, Oxfam estimated that millions more people were expected to die from hunger than from COVID-19 due to government policies flattening their economies. Additionally, increased unemployment and forced lockdowns skyrocketed rates of physical and mental abuse, substance abuse, and suicide. Progressives never feel remorse for the consequences of their harmful actions and no one has expressed regret.

Germans coined the word, “Lugenpress,” for lying mainstream media. Throughout 2020, the Lugenpress undermined American liberty and prosperity. Instead of discussing alternatives and searching for better solutions, restrictive government actions were propagandized incessantly.

Although the CDC estimated the survivability rate is 99.98 percent for people younger than 50 years old, the Lugenpress perspective always was consistent with the aphorism from the 1986 horror film The Fly, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” For example, several months ago, the CDC reported 164,000 deaths with COVID-19, but, of these, there were 10,000 deaths from COVID-19.

The Lugenpress never give context to facilitate critical thinking. They only ever-present the first number and never the second. The first number should be considered skeptically. There are many egregious examples now, but a familiar case is the July Florida motorcyclist death taking days for authorities to reassign the death from COVID-19 to a traffic accident. Taxpayer dollars are attached to COVID-19 death attributions but not traffic accidents.

Additionally, the Lugenpress attacked citizens exercising Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly in reaction to governments trampling our Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech must be politically correct. Mayhem by totalitarian groups Antifa and BLM is acceptable, but patriot assemblies invariably are characterized as dangerous super-spreader events. As Dr. Fauci put it in November, Americans should just “do what you’re told.”

Although the government may not enact any law abridging Freedom of Worship, churches and worshipers have been frequent targets. After decades of assaults, the war in America against Christianity should be apparent to any sentient person. The coronavirus was just another long and strong lever to attack Christianity.

Progressive fascists deny the science showing public mask-wearing and lockdowns are ineffective against viral infection. Nevertheless, the Biden Administration has threatened mandatory mask-wearing.

As of November, no refereed science or medical journals published studies indicating public mask-wearing effectively reduced coronavirus infection. However, journals published studies about mask types, materials, virus dimensions versus grid spacings, and droplet propagation densities and distances after speaking, coughing, or sneezing.

In March, Dr. Fauci acknowledged mass public mask-wearing was ineffective against viral infections. But, within weeks, without disavowing his earlier assertion, Dr. Fauci succumbed to political correctness and endorsed mandatory mask-wearing. Although it won’t stop infections, wearing a mask is an effective talisman against mask fascists.

Illegal and unconstitutional totalitarian edicts dictate healthy, law-abiding citizens stay under virtual house arrest without due process. This despite data invariably indicating higher infection rates follow confining people to small areas. Further undercutting lockdowns, in November, a Chinese study indicated asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 doesn’t occur.

Last year’s fascist experience was a trial run. Progressives aim to uncork fascist genies for climate change, the Green New Deal, and a Great Reset. As with the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be worldwide stampede coordination. This time, stronger resistance and pushback are needed.

Vaccinations and herd immunity are opportunities for Americans to stuff the fascist health genie back into its bottle. Citizens have recourses.

New York Giants football fans deserve applause and gratitude for gathering 44,000 petition signatures to ban progressive fascist Governor Andrew Cuomo from the playoff game. Mr. Cuomo accepted ostracism.

Otherwise, Americans should call it for what it is and speak out against progressive fascism in every incarnation and implementation. Finally, citizens should work to recall and remove from office mayors, governors, representatives, and senators lacking courage standing up for liberty and prosperity.

Whitson G. Waldo, III is a capitalist, a venture capitalist, and master and skipper of the sailing vessel Bountibou, a Nauticat 43 monohull sloop.

IMAGE: Dummies in masks by Alex Borland at PublicDomainPictures.net. CC0 Public Domain.