Freedom Begins to Return as Masks Are Removed

Tourists, some in face masks while others are not, visit the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, on May 14, 2021. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

So here we are, 14 months or so after “two weeks to slow the spread” and “15 days to flatten the curve,” finally being allowed out of our jail cells and “permitted” by elected and unelected bureaucrats alike to breathe fresh air without wearing a slave muzzle. As the prisoners in Don Pizarro’s dungeons sing in Beethoven’s mighty opera, “Fidelio,” “Oh what joy, in the open air: Freely to breathe again!”