OPINION:
An In-N-Out restaurant in Contra Costa County in California was forced to close because business owners refused to play the government’s game and force customers to show zee vaccine papahs as conditions of entry.
It’s boot-stomping good times for the Democrats. After all, when else in history, save for this coronavirus era, do socialists and communists masquerading as Democratic Party members get to exert such controls on supposedly free citizens?
If only In-N-Out were a publicly traded burger joint. Now would be the time for American citizens — the real American citizens, not the fake “don’t belong here” socialists — now would be the time for the real American citizens to step forward and buy, buy, buy, invest, invest, invest in the company. Nothing says “sit down and shut up, comrade” like a good old-fashioned infusion of free market support that swells the revenues of an under-attack business. Think Chick-fil-A and the outpouring of customer purchases as backlash for LGBTQ attacks on the chain’s Christian owners.
Like Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out is family-owned.
Unlike Chick-fil-A, In-N-Out has been shut down — at least, this particular In-N-Out.
“Health officials closed the [Contra Costa County] restaurant,” The Hill wrote, “after it would not check the vaccination status of people who wanted to eat indoors.”
What a ridiculous land of lunacy California has become — and on the backs of the coronavirus, buoyed by power-hungry leftists, the lunacy’s sweeping the nation.
In a statement, Contra Costa Environmental Health officials said they gave the particular In-N-Out restaurant owners several notifications, several warnings, several citations, leading to several fines, about their failures to demand customers show proof of coronavirus vaccination.
As if that in itself is sane?
“We refuse to become the vaccination police for any government,” said In-N-Out’s legal chief, Arnie Wensinger. “It is unreasonable, invasive and unsafe to force our restaurant associates to segregate customers into those who may be served and those who may not, whether based on the documentation they carry, or any other reason.”
Right. Quite right.
Government’s gone mad. Government’s gone tyrannical. Government’s gone full-blown gestapo-like and turned the free market into a weapon against free citizens.
Government knows it doesn’t have the constitutional authority to patrol the streets and demand American citizens show proof of vaccine as a condition of travel. So government has sicced the private businesses on the citizens instead, to do the dirty work of bureaucratic bidding.
Too many businesses have played along with the charade and rather than fight the government overreach, turned attack dog instead on customers and employees, issuing vaccine demands and demanding proof of vaccines in exchange for the honor of shopping within the facility, or working at the facility. That’s “honor” in quotation marks.
In-N-Out has chosen the path of righteous fight.
They’re fighting the good fight. They’re waging the necessary war. They’re defending the Constitution and individual liberties and free choice and personal decision and independent thinking and sound science and hey, a host of other things that used to be inherently embraced by all good Americans — ’til the coronavirus came, that is, and Democrats saw and seized their chance for total top-down tyrannical rule.
“The closing and fines in Contra Costa County follow an In-N-Out in San Francisco that was closed for several days for not checking people’s vaccination status,” The Hill wrote.
That’s the Democrat way. That’s the Democrat dream for America: Do the right thing — and you’ll pay.
Any good American worth his or her weight in freedom will be dining at the nearest In-N-Out restaurant this evening. Democrats must not be allowed to use the coronavirus to strip individuals of liberties; Democrats must not be allowed to use COVID-19 to weaponize the private market against free American citizens.
Buy more In-N-Out burgers. Quit voting for Democrats. Those are today’s keys for saving America from socialism.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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