Vicki McKenna, whose on-air presence in Madison and Milwaukee must infuriate their liberals:

How is everyone doing in this time of The Great Pandemic?

I am not taking this coercion well at all. And it’s just beginning.

Now despite what you may think, I am NOT “low risk” for coronavirus complications or death. I am considered moderate risk to ‘at risk’ depending on the “expert” opining. So even though I am a natural skeptic (and cynic) about the press, when I read the stories, occasionally it scares the hell out of me. I am not cavalier about this disease.

But I still want my freedom. I want it more than I ever have. I confess, it never dawned on me how physical my desire for freedom really was — until I started seeing taken away, little by little, piece by piece.

I also never had to fathom the real meaning of “the economy is life” until I saw our government rip it apart business by business, job by job and family by family.

Destroying our economy destroys our nation because it destroys our people’s ability to be free. No amount of “for your own good” proselytizing changes that reality. Freedom isn’t transactional.

How much more can we take before America doesn’t look much like America any longer? I don’t know. We’re a resilient bunch, but every nation has a breaking point. Taking away the choice to live free, even if it’s little by little surely doesn’t make us stronger.

Right now, we’re all slaves to fear. For how long?

Our families must be able to choose to be together. Our citizens must be able to choose to continue their civil and social lives.

I want to choose for myself whether to risk shaking someone’s hand, or seeing my family and friends. I want to choose for myself take the risk of going to church and taking Holy Communion. If I choose poorly, that’s on me. If you choose to reject my handshake, that’s OK, too.

The longer this goes on with no end in sight, the harder it is to see a future unblemished by the soft tyranny we’ve invited into our lives. And it’s only been a month. Imagine 6 months. 12 months.

I want to see kids running around in the neighborhoods again and shrieking in glee so loud the sound pierces through my windows. I want to see groups of friends smiling and laughing as they walk into the local pub on a Friday night after work. I want my best friend’s elderly mom not to be lonely anymore. I want to see my family. I want to go to church.

One thing I can say about this awful mess is that it focused my mind on the things I used to take for granted about this amazing experiment in ordered LIBERTY.

I am not a child in need of protection from the idiocracy we call government. I am grown woman with more than 5 decades of life behind me. I know how to wash my hands and sanitize my environment.

I want to be free to choose–and I trust others to choose as well. Some choose poorly, some choose well. But it’s the freedom to choose in the first place that makes us America. The Great American Experiment CAN fail. It just depends on whether we are willing to let it fail.

Let’s not let “for your own good” become our new motto.