Barefaced Floridians embrace right to kill neighbors

Would our forefathers have bothered tussling with the Redcoats had they known that 244 years later, bossy-pants busybodies would infringe on our God-given right to spew COVID-19-laden spittle onto our neighbors?

As I recollect, their rallying cry was “Don’t tread on me.” Not “Don’t sneeze on the

Publix cashier.”

So far, in this great philosophical struggle, liberty has prevailed. You can see it in the fully exposed faces of America’s new rebels strolling down Las COVID Boulevard. They defy face-mask-in-public mandates as an affront to our inalienable right to be stupid.

If their collective intransigence results in a brutal surge of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations, so what? If the nation suffers another hundred thousand COVID-19 fatalities, that’s a cheap price to pay for the freedom to bar hop without a face covering.

Besides, the elastic bands that secure masks tend to cause my ears to flap out like Barack Obama’s. (Speaking of tyrannical leaders with the audacity to put the health and safety of the old and infirm over the sacred and cherished right to party hard.)

“Give me liberty or give me death,” said Patrick Henry, hero of that previous American revolution. But why choose? Thanks to Florida’s modern-day patriots, we can have both.

For decades now, Florida has been the great protector of individual rights, even at the expense of the commonweal. Not even ghastly mass murders, including the killing of school children, have shaken our fervent belief that lost lives are just not important enough to inconvenience owners of military-style assault weapons. Make that, “Give me liberty and I’ll give your state a gun homicide every 10 hours.”

In Florida, because we so love freedom, the legislature has taken a Churchillian stand against local governments who would interfere with smoker rights. It goes like this: “We shall pre-empt them on the beach; we shall pre-empt them in the parks; we shall pre-empt them in patio dining areas; we shall pre-empt them in music venues; we shall pre-empt them in the stand-alone bars. We shall never surrender.”

Their courage held through the 2020 legislative session. In March, companion bills that would have outlawed smoking at beaches and parks died in committee without the bother of floor votes in the House or Senate … because Florida cannot allow mere health and environmental concerns to subvert individual rights.

I’m surprised Tom Jefferson didn’t incorporate a few of Florida’s peculiar rights in the Declaration of Independence. Like the right, memorialized in state law, to dump bio-medical waste in county dumps, no matter what a county commission might say.

Nor can cities and counties infringe on the intrinsic right to package take-out with plastic bags, plastic straws and Styrofoam food containers. A true patriot regards plastic detritus littering our beaches, streets and waterways as the variegated tesserae in Florida’s freedom mosaic.

Thank goodness Tiger Kings, we live in a state where local governments can’t interfere with a homeowner’s menagerie of exotic jungle cats or deadly venomous snakes. A tiger’s roar, accompanied by an occasional expression of human terror, has become the Florida freedom anthem.

Add the harmony of chainsaws, music to the ears of state legislators who voted to emasculate the legislative power of communities that value tree canopy more than a builder’s right to denude the joint.

Only because our legislators cherish individual rights, visitors to Key West can now resume slathering their pinkish flesh with oxybenzone and octinoxate without fear of municipal interference. And to hell with the coral reefs.

Last year, Key West banned the use of sunscreens composed of chemicals known to damage reefs. Sunscreen industry lobbyists quickly explained to Republican lawmakers that they should be outraged by such a blatant infringement on personal liberty.

Two weeks ago, the governor restored that liberty, signing into law a measure that pre-empted the authority of communities with the temerity to mess with sunscreen. (For full effect, the reader should now begin humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic.)

Sure, if we caved in to the wanton demands of freedom-haters, Key West snorkelers and scuba divers and sunbathers could opt for sunscreens composed of titanium oxide or zinc oxide-based lotions, which won’t harm coral reefs.

But I ask you, fellow liberty lovers, would George Washington have given up his Coppertone without a fight? (At this point, the reader should stop humming and start sobbing.)

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @grimm_fred