A little earlier today, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that Texas would not participate in the totalitarian impulse gathering to force all Americans to produce documentation that they have received a Wuhan virus vaccine.

Texans shouldn't be required to show proof of vaccination & reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives.

I issued an Executive Order that prohibits government-mandated vaccine passports in Texas.

Don't tread on our personal freedoms. pic.twitter.com/weTbz4FKyH

— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 6, 2021

With this, Texas joins Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, (soon to be) Tennessee, and Florida in laying down a marker that they will not allow civil liberties to be held hostage by the Pandemic Porn industry. Read my colleague Nick Arama’s post TX Gov. Greg Abbott Shows More Red State Power, Joins Ron DeSantis In Fight Against Vaccine Passports.

This declaration is as good as far as it goes. Government, at any level, has zero business requiring citizens to carry around proof of vaccination as a condition for living their lives. Where Governor Abbott fails is that he is perfectly willing to let any company require you to present proof of vaccination before being able to engage in commerce. Thus far, to the best of my research, Governor De Santis is the only state executive who has specifically barred private businesses from using some version of the vaccine passport to screen customers.

If Texas or Missouri or any other state allows a private actor to require the use of a “vaccine passport,” then it doesn’t make a tinker’s damn if states forbid a “state-sponsored” vaccine passport.  For instance, these are the hoops the NY Mets are imposing on fans (to the extent those exist):

Ticketed guests 2 years and older will need one of the these:

🔶 Full vaccination (at least 14 days prior)
🔷 Negative PCR COVID test (within 72 hours)
🔶 Negative Antigen test (within 6 hours)

For more info about COVID testing & proof of vaccination: https://t.co/bSxZoasLrd pic.twitter.com/BteSFGYDsx

— New York Mets (@Mets) April 3, 2021

In fact, if a government agency misuses your personal medical information, you may…may…have a legal cause of action. As we’ve seen from the shenanigans at Google and other tech companies, if they use your personal information for whatever the hell they want to, then you are basically out of luck.

For far, far, far too long, too many conservatives have followed the “muh private business” line of thinking that holds that private companies should be able to operate as they please. While I agree with this, if one assumes that private businesses are focused on their bottom line and not on woke ideology, I’m not sure sane people can make that argument anymore. This has led to alleged conservatives defending Facebook and Twitter and Google limiting the ability of anyone they don’t like to speak (for instance, President Trump’s very voice has been banned by Facebook). These people have defended the “right” of PayPal to shut down contributions to legal defense funds of people on the right while allowing violent leftists to rake in money. They have defended banks cutting law-abiding businesses, like gun stores, off from financing and credit card use. I can already hear the “principled conservative” chorus tuning up with “they have a responsibility to keep all their employees and customers safe” and “they will be sued if they don’t do it.” This is a typical response from Conservative, Inc., those worthies who suckle at the leftist teat and bleat about their sacred principles:

There shouldn’t be any form of government issued vaccine passport or mandates. But private businesses and organizations should be allowed to institute the health rules they want for their freedom of association.

— Brad Polumbo 🇺🇸⚽️ 🏳️‍🌈 (@brad_polumbo) April 3, 2021

If you need to produce proof of vaccination so that you can use TicketMaster or Six Flags or Walmart or Best Buys or Home Depot, the offense to liberty is exactly the same whether government or the private sector imposes it. Conservatives need to open their eyes and realize that the private sector is neither neutral nor is it friendly:

200 Companies Speak Out Against Election Reform Efforts, Including PayPal, Dow, HP, Microsoft, Uber, Under Armourhttps://t.co/yOhWQiNj5U

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) April 5, 2021

Corporate America is actively opposed to civil liberties and to freedom and to the Constitution and any policy that does not grasp that reality is, at best, useless and, at worst, a dishonest sham.