After spending a week in the Midwest, I can say that there is a stark contrast between the nanny states and free America. My tour was fairly limited to Minnesota and Iowa, but it was at least a sampling of somewhere else.

The biggest difference I would attribute to attitude.

  • Fear of Covid-19
  • Fear of the unvaccinated
  • Fear of government
  • Fear of what others thought
  • Fear of the unknown

I spent a night in Minneapolis waiting for my flight back home. Everyone that I spoke with said that I should walk the ‘Mall of America’ because I was only one mile away from my hotel. So, I did. And the first thing I observed was that 75% of the people were in the mall without a mask on.

I spent the majority of the week in Iowa and I would say that the status quo dissatisfaction quotient is higher there than in Minnesota. The official state policy is that masks are not required for the vaccinated. I would estimate that it was more of a 90% unmasked interaction.

My personal view is that I support right to choose. I also support the businesses right to go above and beyond and require masks. Masked were required by my employer, so I wore one even in the car for five hours with my co-worker. While in Iowa the policy changed and so did I (as well as all of the other employees).

You may live in free America… I don’t. I know that the official policy mandated by the state is mask required. I was at Costco last night and we were the other direction; 95% of the people were wearing masks. As to the others? I am not sure if they were disregarding the rules or they were taking them off after entry.

This should be the great benefit of a republic. We should have the freedom to live in idiotic states and be happy. If we are not happy, then we have the freedom to go somewhere else. Oregon has been my home most of my life but I have lived elsewhere and I am getting to the point that I would rather be somewhere else.

If we really believed in the Constitution, then the ninth and tenth amendments would be strong rather than non-existent. Specifically stating (9th) that powers not specifically mentioned in the constitution belong to the people and that (10th) the federal government only has powers mentioned in the Constitution. The ninth amendment gives the power to the state of Oregon to create mask mandates. The tenth amendment forbids 1) the existence of the FAA and 2) the FAA to require all airlines enforce mask use.

We the people have the right to create a near totalitarian hell if we so choose. We have the right to permit homeless camps to block access to municipal pumps so our houses and neighborhoods flood. We have the right to mandate business with the state require unproven vaccines that also don’t hep vulnerable people and who knows what future consequences will be. We have the right to create recycling programs that we pay for and cannot use. Because our first amendment and the freedom to assemble, we have the right to have months of daily riots and destruction without consequences. I will talk about the difference between enumerated rights some other day, but that is the premise.

End Your Programming Routine: Friday we are leaving for more of free America. We will be spending the holiday week in Texas. I am sure that there will be more on this topic later in the month. There is no surprise to me that population demographics are rapidly shifting. Oregon has grown dynamically in the last ten years because it is a cheaper California. Idaho, Montana and Utah have grown tremendously over the last couple years because they are are better and cheaper than Oregon.