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Gov. Henry McMaster |
South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster on Tuesday issued an executive order preventing school districts and local governments from requiring students or residents to wear facial coverings, reports The State.
The order, signed late Tuesday afternoon, allows the parents of students to opt out of mask requirements imposed by school districts, invalidates any local government mask mandates predicated on the governor’s COVID-19-related state of emergency and preemptively bars any jurisdiction from making proof of vaccination a prerequisite for receiving government services or entering any public building.
“With the COVID-19 vaccine readily available and case numbers dropping, I will not allow local governments to use the state of emergency declaration as a reason for implementing or maintaining mask mandates,” McMaster said in a statement. “Everybody knows what we need to do to stay safe — including wearing a mask if you’re at risk of exposing others — but we must move past the time of governments dictating when and where South Carolinians are required to wear a mask. Maintaining the status quo ignores all of the great progress we’ve made.”
And I hasten to add, yet, another example of a larger government body being less authoritarian than some local government bodies. (See my earlier discussion: A Big Problem For the Small Government is Always Better Crowd).
The idea is that any size government can be tyrannical. We should welcome freedom from any statist that is willing to move a bit in that direction, regardless of the geographic area he rules over. And the deeper advance should always, not between state sizes, but toward the Private Property Society.
This would have been heroic a year ago, maybe six months ago.
ReplyDeleteAgain, what power do Governors have over local governments and school districts?
State funding.
DeleteHardly heroic. Too little too late.
ReplyDeleteI side with the commentors on this one. It's just not the right word. Sure it is great that some southern Republicans are falling all over themselves to protect some freedoms right now. It's even AWESOME. But heroic is doing it when the political winds are going against you. Only Desantis and Noem, as far as I am aware, had those cajones. Guys like abbott (tx) and this fella, sure it's nice. But they should be hanging from lamp posts for waiting until it was politically convenient.
ReplyDeleteOf course, that is if any lamp posts are left after the real evil crew is taken care of.
He maintains the state of emergency... When he is told to reimpose the mandates the South Carolinians will get it nice and hard.
ReplyDelete