While the battle over mask mandates for children is most visible in Florida because Gov. Ron DeSantis has decided to actually fight back, other states are seeing the fights play out at the local level. Parents are showing up to school board meetings to express their displeasure with leaders who continue to spit in the face of objective data when it comes to forcing kids to wear dirty pieces of cloth on their faces.

One of those parents who showed up is The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who gave a short speech (the board limits the time) that hit the nail directly on the head. In a clear and concise laying out of the facts, he reinforced why this is a fight worth fighting for parents who aren’t tired of complying.

Here is my speech to the Nashville School Board where I spoke out against the cruel and indefensible mask mandate for children pic.twitter.com/Eq5IFsKyja

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) August 12, 2021

Full disclosure, I believe Walsh’s kids are homeschooled, but he pays the same taxes as everyone else. Given that, he has every right to show up and support the other parents who are trying to get their school board to apply some common sense.

Walsh’s key point, which he gets right to in the video, is that the school board has provided no data to back up their argument that masks are necessary for children. That’s likely because that data doesn’t exist. As I laid out again yesterday with some of the latest numbers, there is no correlation between mask mandates and the spread of COVID-19. With children already not representing much of a spread vector for the virus, there certainly isn’t any data showing mask mandates for children are a good policy.

Yet, in a move meant to cover their own tails, school boards across the nation are reinstating mask mandates because it allows them to say they are “doing something.” It’s an easy out that ignores the needs of children and the possible long-term effects mandatory masking all day, every day can have on them.

Walsh continued by then offering the facts for the other side, including the invulnerability of children to the virus and the fact that teachers have had ample opportunity to get vaccinated themselves. Walsh also slammed the board for never calling for masks during normal flu seasons even though the flu is more deadly to kids by the numbers. Continuing, he used the analogy of forcing children to wear helmets all day (children are far more likely to die of head trauma than COVID), noting that people would rightly call that abusive.

Lastly, Walsh got to the overarching point, which is that these mask mandates are not meant to help children. Rather, they exist to make adults feel better about themselves. That’s not a justification for forcing kids to wear dirty, restrictive masks at school and that’s why this is a war worth waging. Enough of the selfishness. If we are supposed to “follow the science,” then let’s actually do so.