Living in North Dakota is somewhat insulating to the COVID hysteria, no thanks to several authoritarian-leaning health “experts” and the ND Department of Health (that’s redundant). I absolutely love hearing from people that travelled to North Dakota from a crazy blue state, and they say it’s amazing to realize how suffocating it was in their home state, but they hadn’t realized it until they came here, saw people carrying on pleasantly and unafraid. It seemed that here they could somehow “feel” freedom. That’s a beautiful thing.

Traveling to blue states or internationally often puts one face-to-face with the tyrannical, oppressive reality of arbitrary, unproven COVID crackdown measures. It also provides an opportunity for evaluation and comparison of policies. As I write this, I am working on a project in Belize, and I am struck by the similarities of what is happening here with what I see in the US and in ND. I needed a negative test to get into the country, just as I will need one to get back into the US. This has been a policy that at first blush seems reasonable, except that it doesn’t work for a pandemic of an aerosolized SARS virus. This is borne out repeatedly. For example, Mexico, which doesn’t have a negative test entry policy, fares better than the US in the number of COVID deaths per million, despite the US having a superior medical system.

The one thing that stands out more than any other is the presence of people fighting for freedom against the nonsensical, reactionary policies, the capricious government mandates, and the “Karens” (although they don’t have a corresponding term here). Just as in the US, there are a great number of people who are dismayed by the mandates, but the vocal, organized people are the Mennonites. There are several communities of Mennonites here. Apparently, they dislike government intrusion into their lives, and value freedom a great deal.

The Belizean government instituted several mandates such as masking in public, and a national 9 p.m. curfew. They also instituted a policy that prohibited any unvaccinated person from going into government buildings. The Mennonites defied these policies, and organized vocal opposition. They came from their communities throughout the country to hold a massive rally in the Capital, but were roadblocked from entering the city. They started rallies in their communities every Sunday in protest. In response, the government issued a temporary nationwide order that people couldn’t leave their homes on Sundays, except for gas, groceries, and church. The Mennonites remained defiant, and still do. The government relented very quickly on the vaccine mandate to enter government buildings, and changed the curfew to 11 p.m., or 12 p.m. on Friday and Saturday (the virus comes out later on weekends). I was doing some work in one of the Mennonite communities the other day, and similar to people from a blue state coming to ND, found it refreshing to not wear a mask, or get my hands sprayed with sanitizer as I entered a store. Rather than sanitizer, it smelled like freedom.

The arbitrary silliness is rampant down here, as it is in much of the U.S. and the entire world. Likely the most egregious example is a period of time late last year when the government imposed 7 p.m. curfews and extensive travel restriction on the entire nation – except the four major tourist destinations. You see it’s ok, to clamp down on people’s freedom, so long as it doesn’t hurt your pocketbook, or the pocketbooks of the friends of the people making the decisions.

Each time a ridiculous policy is proven to be just that, the authoritarian elite simply pivot to a different policy, never acknowledging their error. Take, for example, the sudden admission that cloth masks don’t help prevent transmission of COVID. Seriously? Has anyone admitted their error? Dr. Fauci magically determined that the time we need to stay home if COVID positive is five days instead of ten. What a tremendous and unnecessary loss of productivity and wages for so many people. And yet he won’t apologize for this error.

North Dakota has been a unique and perfect opportunity to compare K-12 school masking policies. We now know for a fact that masking kids, and isolating them (sending them home) if exposed is completely unnecessary, not to mention harmful to the children. Has anyone admitted their error? The relentless demands from especially-enlightened pediatricians and other physicians, county health agencies, and various government health hacks, that we mask all children to protect them and our communities was 100% wrong. Period. The presentations, the letters to the editor, the public admonitions; all bull crap. I would sure like it if someone would admit they were wrong. It would go a long way to gaining back just a smidge of credibility.

Becker is the founder and leader of the Bastiat Caucus of the North Dakota Republican Party and has represented District 7 in the House since 2013.