Joe Biden’s Orwellian Coronavirus Regime

A mericans would be wise to dust off their copies of Animal Farm, George Orwell’s cautionary tale in which an ostensibly egalitarian government becomes so corrupted that its guiding principle is reduced to “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Unfortunately, Americans may find that Orwell’s critique of a hypocritical ruling class sounds familiar. Since the pandemic arose, our society has been divided in two: those who command and those expected to obey.

While the ruled are forced to accept that their children will wear masks for hours in the classroom, that they will show their vaccination papers to re-enter society, and that they will soothe sick loved ones only by Zoom, the rulers defy the mandates they impose. The list of hypocrites is far too long to recount fully here. But to name a few: there was California governor Gavin Newsom’s infamous French Laundry faux-pas (eating out maskless in indoor close quarters, in violation of his own state’s guidelines); D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser’s partying unmasked indoors at a wedding reception (against her city’s own guidelines); and American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, who has called for universal masking at schools, removing her own at a conference.

But no other example may be so galling as President Biden’s going maskless in a posh D.C. restaurant while neither eating nor drinking, in violation not only of both the restaurant’s rules and D.C.’s, but also of the pronouncements of various public-health bodies in his administration mandating masking on government property and public transportation. The hypocrisy is truly staggering. It’s even more staggering when considered in light of his edict a few weeks ago that federal workers either submit to a vaccine or accept as a penalty the loss of their livelihoods.

That penalty looms just over the horizon for America’s prison and border officials, who have until November 22 to fully comply with His Majesty’s orders. But no such mandate is imposed on inmates and those who illegally cross America’s borders. The sanctimonious chief who robs law-enforcement officers of personal choice cannot bring himself to make the same demands of criminals.

In other words, in Joe Biden’s America, those who break the law are more free than those who enforce it. Even in this age of hypocrisy, Biden’s double standard shocks the conscience. And the consequences of this policy may show that hypocrisy mixed with incompetence is a dangerous concoction.

President Biden’s inept plans threaten our safety because he assumes that those who are expected to obey can never be pushed too far. But Americans are still a free people and do not take infringements upon their liberty lightly. Predictably, some may not submit to coercion, and a great many of America’s correctional and border officials may choose to find other lines of work — at a time of surging violent crime and illegal immigration — where they are permitted to make their own personal health choices.

Biden’s vaccine mandate could exacerbate an ongoing correctional-staffing crisis. Earlier this year, reports indicated that nearly a third of federal correctional-officer positions are unfilled. Some prisons have had to resort to using cooks, teachers, and nurses to guard inmates. Correctional officials are struggling to maintain order as prisoners engage in fights and attempt to escape. Further strain on our prison system through a reduction of officers risks the safety of prison staff, inmates, and communities.

The situation is no better on the border. More than 1.7 million migrants were detained along the Mexican border during the 2021 fiscal year. According to Customs and Border Protection, this is the highest level ever recorded. Rather than thanking our Border Patrol agents for a job well done and encouraging recruitment of more officials to protect our country, President Biden’s stubborn insistence on mandating vaccination threatens to thin the ranks of our agents and to make our borders even more porous.

Thankfully, leaders are standing up for personal rights that have thus far been denied to law enforcement. Responding to the vaccine mandate on his officers, Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said, “We believe that people have the right to choose. If they choose to get vaccinated, good for them. If they choose not to, I think that’s their choice.”

That is what real leadership looks like. By protecting personal choice, Judd seeks to protect his workforce and, by extension, the country. Contrast Judd’s words with those of the president of the United States. He believes the mandates are “not about freedom or personal choice” and confirmed to Anderson Cooper during a CNN townhall that he believes police officers and first responders should be terminated if they do not comply with his orders.

I hope that, for the good of the country, the resistance to Biden’s mandates convinces him to reverse course before the staffing crises at our prisons and the border are worsened.

In Animal Farm, Squealer, the propagandist for the corrupt regime, states that the leader would only be too happy to let others make decisions for themselves, “but sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, and then where should we be?”

So what is the result when your government claims a monopoly on wisdom? In Joe Biden’s Orwellian regime, where lawbreakers have more rights than law-enforcement officers, restricting liberty may very well mean surrendering the security of our communities and our southern border.