Tinhorn tyrant should take history lesson

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example — Justice Louis Brandeis, dissenting in Olmstead v. United States, 1928

It is a profoundly confusing lesson that Florida government is teaching its people under the ominous cloud of a resurgent, lethal pandemic.

On one hand, there is the luminous example of the devotion to duty and, yes, the heroism of school officials in Broward, Palm Beach and six other counties who are defying the wrath of a Tallahassee tyrant in order to better protect their children from COVID-19, which has already killed more than 42,000 Floridians.

On the other, there is the deplorable example of the tyrant himself, Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is practicing the tawdriest form of politics, in which even children are expendable for the sake of political ambition.

All the science, based on the experience of our nation and others, is that face masks inhibit the contagion of the coronavirus, protecting not only the wearers but, crucially, everyone with whom they come in contact. They save lives; they are the second line of defense after vaccination, and the first for children under 12 who have no approved vaccine.

DeSantis’s own Department of Health advises on its website that “all individuals in Florida should wear masks where social distancing is not possible,” other than for exceptions such as medical conditions or outdoor work and recreation “with appropriate social distancing in place.” There is no exception for schools, nor any suggestion for parents to spurn the advice.

But DeSantis, in an unannounced but undisguised campaign for the U.S. presidency, sees his path to the nomination through that subset of Americans who prize “personal freedom,” as they put it, over any caring about others.

In this instance, “personal freedom” means exempting their children as well as themselves from any mandate to wear face masks or be vaccinated against a plague that is both relentless and preventable.

That is as illogical as claiming freedom to drag-race on public thoroughfares or run red lights. But there has always been what the historian Richard Hofstadter famously called “the paranoid strain in American politics,” and every so often, there are unscrupulous politicians to exploit it. Notably, people with no children in schools are turning up at raucous protests.

DeSantis and his appointees at the Board of Education are moving to forfeit the salaries of defiant school officials in Broward and Alachua counties. They’re also likely to go after those in Leon, Hillsborough, MiamiDade, Duval, Sarasota — a largely Republican county, unlike the others — and Palm Beach. There have even been implied threats to suspend board members.

Going where not even a right-wing Legislature ventured, the state board adopted an “emergency” rule to let parents unhappy with mask mandates put their children in private schools at public expense under a law that allowed the victims of bullying to do so. But the board’s rule distorts the law’s definition of “bullying” beyond all common sense. In any case, the real bullies are those parents and politicians who would put other people’s children in harm’s way for a perverted sense of “personal freedom.”

There is nothing readily apparent anywhere in Florida laws or Constitution to support such flagrant abuses of power. Rules of any sort require some specific grant of authority from the Legislature. There has been none enabling the Board of Education to withhold salaries for any reason.

Indeed, some parents are suing the state in Tallahassee, where a judge properly refused the administration’s attempt to dismiss the case prematurely.

Speaking of bullies, consider Rep. Randy Fine, R-Palm Shores, who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee on K-12 spending. This is what he had to say to the Miami Herald: “I can tell you, if my school district requires masks, I will make sure they get hurt next year. I’m not going to share what I will do. But it will hurt. Students are not going to be prevented from going to school because some bureaucrat wants to tell parents how to raise their child. It’s not going to happen, at least in Brevard County.”

It is those “bureaucrats” who are trying to save children’s lives. It is politicians like Fine who would waste them.

Fine’s arrogance is all the more astounding considering personal experience that ought to have sensitized him. Fine says he “almost died” from COVID-19 and that even though his son had it, he won’t be wearing a mask to school. He called for school vaccine clinics instead, apparently ignoring the unavailability to children under 12.

Not coincidentally, Fine is also the subject of a citizen’s complaint that he broke an anti-harassment law with an internet post containing the personal phone number of a school board member whom he accused of planning to sponsor a mask mandate. She reportedly received more than 111 threatening calls and messages. No such vote was scheduled, but angry parents caused the meeting to be cut short. The board members needed a police escort to leave the building. The state attorney referred the complaint against Fine to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, requesting a preliminary investigation.

This is not the first instance of Florida school children becoming hostages to political ambitions, although it has been a long time since the last one.

In 1970, Republican Gov. Claude R. Kirk Jr. suspended the entire Manatee County School Board and superintendent in a vain attempt to stop them from complying with a federal court busing order. It had been 16 years since the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation in the schools to be unconstitutional.

Kirk declared himself to be in charge of Manatee schools. Amid the confrontation, he took 90 state troopers to Bradenton, blocking federal marshals who meant to arrest his aides, and he warned of a “grave danger of loss of life.”

But he gave up after three days in the face of a federal judge’s order to fine him $10,000 for each day of defiance.

To Kirk, his election issue was “forced busing.”

To DeSantis, it is “forced masking.” The pandering is the same.

Then, as now, Floridians had two conflicting lessons to absorb: Kirk’s demagoguery, or U.S. District Judge Ben Krentzman’s fidelity to the law. The voters applied the right one.

Kirk had been cruising, or so he thought, to re-election. He wound up losing to Democrat Reubin Askew, having forfeited the support even of many conservatives.

That was eight years before DeSantis was born, so he could not be expected to remember it.

But it would behoove him to learn about it.

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney, and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Editorials are the opinion of the Board and written by one of its members or a designee. To contact us, email at letters@sun-sentinel.com.