At the End of the Day, Freedom Will Win

I was offline for most of last week but whenever I got the chance, I checked in to see how the Freedom Convoy in Canada was faring.

Like many, I was pleased to find out that they were still going strong and doing their thing despite all the obstacles thrown at them by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Ontario government and other local authorities, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, and the obedient hall monitors at GoFundMe.

I was also happy to find out that podcaster Joe Rogan was still not backing down, was still hosting his programs despite the left’s/media’s/Hollywood’s/Big Tech’s coordinated attempts to neuter him or shut him down.

Further, I was reminded how many prominent leftists including Bill Maher and J.K. Rowling continue to fearlessly express opinions contrary to established left-wing narratives on mask and vaccine mandates, cancel culture in general, and/or the transgender debate, proving that the red-pilling of America is in fact happening, much to the “woke” left’s chagrin.

I remember in 2020 when the United States was well into the first year of the coronavirus pandemic how conservatives seemed to be losing hope that we as a country would ever get beyond government public health mandates on things like masking, social distancing, gatherings in churches, severe restrictions on businesses and the like.

For well over a year, it seemed like the only people raising questions about government overreach and how we couldn’t stay in that holding pattern forever were libertarians and Republicans including some of my colleagues here as well as then-President Donald Trump, who rightly said on more than one occasion that the United States was not built to be sustained by the government at all, much less controlled by dictatorial fiat.

Cancel culturalists on the left were also becoming emboldened, extending their tentacles far and wide, trying to ensnare Rogan, Rowling, and others who just a few years ago were considered allies by the same people who would later unsuccessfully try to bend them to their will.

Republicans like Sen. Tom Cotton and Rand Paul were villainized by the Usual Suspects for raising questions about the origins of the coronavirus and mask/vaccine mandates respectively. Roughly a year later, not only did their opinions begin going more mainstream and well beyond conservative circles, but the supposed “medical experts” we were told to mindlessly obey began reluctantly admitting whether under grilling from a Congressional committee or elsewhere that Cotton’s and Paul’s claims had some merit. The MSM began singing a different tune as well. And investigative reporting done by conservative media outlets like RedState further vindicated Republicans like Cotton and Paul.

Now here we are, about to hit the two-year anniversary of the pandemic, and we’re seeing a full-blown backlash against some of the things we were told in the first and even well into the second year as it relates to issues like masking, social distancing, in-person learning, and the length of time mandates supposedly needed to be kept in place.

The interesting thing about that is that the backlash is not just coming from the Freedom Convoy truckers but also some elected Democrats including governors and members of the House and Senate, all of who appear to be reading the writing on the wall of what happened in Virginia in November 2021 and are responding accordingly by telling people that we now have to learn to live with threat of the virus because we can’t go on doing things the way we’ve been doing them.

This is a remarkable turn of events, brought on by a whole lot of persistence by some of the same conservatives who two years ago expressed doubt that a majority of people could be convinced that the federal government and blue state governors had stepped way out of bounds with their authoritarian approach to how to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.

Making things better is the fact that these issues have helped some on the left see the light on government overreach. Not a day goes by when I don’t see something tweeted out by someone with a growing number of followers who has in their bio in so many words that they’ve been mugged by reality over the last two years.

Cancel culturalists are also in disarray as prominent public figures like Rogan and Rowling and comedian Dave Chappelle simply refuse to be canceled, and seem to be doing just fine despite the boycott campaigns against them.

At the end of the day, freedom is winning. Not just here but in other parts of the world like Canada, the UK, and France where freedom will not be denied. It will always win as long as there are people who are willing to stand tall, defy the odds, and not back down – especially in times like these.