DeSantis' 'freedom' means 'Do as I say'

Gov. Ron DeSantis believes in freedom of choice: My way or the highway.

“While so many around the country have consigned the people’s rights to the graveyard, Florida has stood as freedom’s vanguard,” graveyard supervisor DeSantis recently proclaimed. “And I’m going to change that as quickly as possible,” he might as well have added.

Not a week goes by that the governor doesn’t pontificate about freedom, or fail to stress how we should not tell people what to think or how they should live their lives.

The legislation he's poised to sign, labeled “Individual Freedom,” or the “Stop WOKE” Act, would limit discussion of race in Florida schools, just one in a series of new laws supposedly designed to promote free speech as they actually crush it.

At a recent press conference, the governor bullied high school students who had the nerve to wear protective masks. Do we still need to wear them to reduce the chance of getting Covid? Intelligent people can disagree. But not in Florida. “We’ve gotta stop with this COVID theater,” DeSantis barked at the students. Hey, what about Florida being a “citadel of freedom?” Perhaps DeSantis meant the Russian-Chinese version.

Meanwhile, pushing their own warped version of “woke”, some GOP lawmakers encourage removing a number of best-selling books from school libraries, ranging from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye to George Orwell’s 1984 to Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, because some parents don’t want them on the shelves. Does “freedom of choice” ring a bell with these lawmakers? How about “mind your own business”?

The governor also is poised to sign a bill to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. If you think the measure would provide exceptions for rape or incest, you’d be wrong. This understandably angers many women, including Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cada. “Abortion is a deeply personal decision,” said Cada, “and silencing that decision is outrageous and wrong.”

DeSantis disagrees, seeing the bill as another step toward making America great again, creeping us closer to what some perversely refer to as the “good old days” when women had coat hanger abortions because they didn’t have access to legal ones.

A bill “prohibiting classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity” in the lower grades, otherwise known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, has also is headed for DeSantis' desk.

This isn’t 1984, Governor, and you’re not Big Brother. If you want your stated belief in freedom to have credibility, stop talking the talk and start walking the walk. Your job is not to tell us how to live but to guard our freedom to live as we want.

Michael J. Vogel is a resident of Boynton Beach.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: WOKE Act, "Don't Say Gay" bill, would limit freedom, not expand it.