This is my last commentary on COVID-related issues, at least for a while, and parents who are frustrated with public K-12 schools and mask mandates do not really know how bad things are regarding parental rights. For the following reasons you have no such rights or, at least in the very near future, you will have none. So read this carefully and be appropriately terrified.

Because of my political history and legal background, I have been asked a number of questions about COVID-related legislation and, in particular, mask requirements. I am concerned that citizens may urge their legislators to take actions on masks that will establish a bad precedent when it may not even be necessary if legislators have the legal and constitutional information they need to evaluate properly the legislative remedies being urged on them. In my book, never establish a potentially bad precedent if there are other ways to address a problem.

I have often quoted Alexis de Tocqueville’s statement that “if lights that guide us ever go out, they will fade little by little, as if of their own accord” and that “[c]onfining ourselves to practice, we may lose sight of basic principles, and when these have been entirely forgotten, we may apply the methods derived from them badly.” Mask mandate legislation just filed in the General Assembly showed how dimly the lights had flickered in me until the last few years. I could verbalize basic principles, but the connection between them had not hit home as it should.