Carol Swain is a former Vanderbilt professor, an author, an ardent political scientist, and an accomplished public speaker. When she speaks everyone listens, regardless that she is a conservative African-American. She is a wonderfully astute woman. Last week she was candidly insightful on Nashville’s Talk Radio and deplored the city’s mayor, John Cooper, who many now suspect will plunge Tennessee’s capital city into bankruptcy “within 30 days,” this according to just as many sources. Spending by Nashville’s Metro government has gone up two to three times the consumer price index in the last four years yet that isn’t what bothers Swain the most.

Mayor Cooper, a brash Democrat who is apparently past listening, is obsessed with power, Carol claims. The quiet majority in Nashville rue him because he doesn’t even blink and it doesn’t seem to bother him at all that he’s shutting down Nashville businesses or that, in the heat of the coronavirus, he’s pushing a 32-percent tax increase on Nashvillians. “It wouldn’t be fair under normal circumstances.” Swain said, “But given the fact, so many Nashvillians are either laid off or the businesses still closed, so you have a shrinking tax base. And it just seems cruel to impose that type of increase on people who are struggling already … it would especially cruel.”

Swain and host Michael Patrick Leahy – who labeled Cooper as a ‘power-hungry, left-wing progressive – were in full agreement Mayor Cooper has been a “huge disappointment” and Leahy said the Mayor’s office “seems to delight in telling business owners they cannot be open,” when the better truth is the Governor and the Tennessee Legislature are mere inches away from telling Cooper – guess what? -- he can no longer open his office. From every indication – “poke him with a fork ‘cause he’s done.”

That’s when Swain dropped her bombshell: “I do believe that Mayor Cooper in governing like Democrats all over the country. They believe if they keep their cities and states shut down, it will hurt Donald Trump and they will be able a gain control of the government in Washington  And we are getting a taste of what it’s like to live under Democratic Party rules and it is worse than ever because the party has gone totally socialist.”

Leahy replied, “Absolutely. And authoritarian. A combination. A wonderful combination.”

* * *

I believe Swain and Leahy are exactly right. I believe it is a diabolical plot, a well-rehearsed and somewhat brazen political conspiracy, and a premier example of idiocy. What a flagrant case of stupid this is in every direction.

Here’s how – Right now there are 18 states in the nation that are still locked-down. In all 18 there are strong protests and growing calls for impeachment from the 40-percent of Americans who are still affected. There are 16 of those 18 states that have Democratic governors. There would be 17 if the Wisconsin Supreme Court had not just ruled Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers badly over-stepped his authority when he extended restrictions in, yes, a somewhat cruel way. Evers’ order to stay-in-place was shamefully reduced, ending tomorrow. The states of Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming never issued any stay-at-home orders, but every state governed by Republicans is open except for Vermont and Massachusetts, both in the hard-hit northeast.

Several counties have, like Nashville, kept the new version of “house arrest” locked down despite their states willingness to open: Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach in Florida, Monroe County in Indiana, St. Louis County in Missouri, and Dallas, Harris (Houston) and Travis (Austin) in Texas. Guess what type of Mayors these cities have got?

I don’t care if you are a Democrat, Republican, or Independent: we must all listen to what the noted theologian C. S. Lewis once said: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

* * *

There is a new virus of sorts sweeping across America as now over 100 of the nation’s county’s sheriffs have publicly stated that they, or their sworn deputies, will not arrest or detain any lawful citizen who is not wearing a mask, or who is breaking the 6-foot distancing rule. Their stand has emboldened many others of our country’s approximately 5,000 county peacemakers who quietly agree. Sheriff Brent Waak of Polk County, Wisc., led the way last month when he admitted he would defy such an order because he respects his constituents’ “fundament rights.”

The first stay-in-shelter order in Wisconsin expired on April 24 and when Gov. Tony Evers extended it (see above), Sheriff Waak balked. “I believe (it) is an over-extension. As your sheriff, I have taken the oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and the laws of the State of Wisconsin. I have always respected the civil liberties of the citizens in Polk County … I will continue to do so.”

* -- Four Michigan sheriffs issued a joint statement after a battered Gov. Gretchen Whitmer demanded an extension of the shut-down: “While we understand her desire to protect the public, we question some restrictions that she has imposed as overstepping her executive authority,” the sheriffs of Leelanau, Benzie, Manistee, and Mason counties said. “She has created a vague framework of emergency laws that only confuse Michigan citizens.” They added that the county sheriffs in the United States considered themselves “as the last line of defense for Americans’ “civil liberties.”

* -- In Riverside County, Calif., County Sheriff Chad Bianco said he and his deputies cannot obey any order that makes “criminals out of business owners.” He explained, “Not only do we not have the resources to enforce unreasonable orders, I refuse to make criminals out of business owners, single moms, and otherwise healthy individuals for exercising their constitutional rights,” Bianco said. “There cannot be a new normal. We are talking about a country formed on the fundamental freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Any new normal is a direct attack on those basic rights which set us apart and make us the greatest country in the world.” (Riverside County is the tenth most populous county in the United States; pop. + 2,450,758)

* -- In Alabama, Baldwin County sheriff Huey Mack wrote Gov. Kay Ivey: “In recognition of those individual rights, while we respect the governor’s order, we don’t want to overstep the boundaries of any individual and simply put them in jail because they were trying to make a living or go into a house of worship,” said Sheriff Huey Mack – now among a number of sheriffs in Alabama who have refused to enforce the governor’s order.

* -- In Illinois, Douglas County Sheriff Joshua Blackwell said some parts of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s stay-at-home order violated his “statutory rights as sheriff to control the internal operations of” his agency. “I swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States and the State of Illinois, and in my opinion, enforcing the executive order would cause me to go against the very principles I swore to protect,” said Sheriff Blackwell.

* -- Also, in Illinois, Tazewell County Sheriff Jeffrey Lower said he has consistently argued throughout the pandemic that the governor “cannot create law.”  Lower said, “What he has mandated are executive orders. Nothing in them give me or my office any authority in law, and I will not enforce them. I will continue to fight against what I believe is a violation of our constitutional rights. ‘We, the People,’ are not just words on a paper. They represent sacrifices that were fought and died for, to give us the rights and privileges through the Constitution.”

* -- In New Mexico, In April, after Gov. Lujan Grisham extended the stay-at-home order until mid-May, Mike Herrington, the sheriff of Chaves County, said he was approached by small business owners, some of them literally in tears. They complained that Walmart and Target, allowed to stay open because they sold food, were also selling televisions and other big items to residents looking to spend their stimulus checks. These owners told Herrington that by opening, they could reduce crowding at the big box stores. “These are my friends and family,” Herrington said. “To look at the fear in their eyes, the fear of losing everything they have, tells me I have no choice but to stand and take on this fight.”

… and then, there is this …

* -- In Illinois, two county prosecutors – aware of 147,469 new cases of COVID-19 and 1,703 related deaths in Illinois in just three weeks – share this statement, “I think the possibility of criminal prosecution in Douglas County (and Piatt County, per DA Dana Rhoades) is one of the least concerns a business or a church faces in making a reopening decision.” Therefore, there are two prosecutors in Illinois who “will not seek court orders against restaurants or gyms “as long as social distancing protocols are in place.”

* * *

So, tell me true: How do you think the Democrat’s plan to forcibly impact 40 percent of the American people is going to turn out.  Trust me, truthfully, I’m betting the other side of “happily ever after.”

royexum@aol.com