If you wonder how state governors and so-called “public health” bureaucrats can continue to impose lockdowns even though the evidence is overwhelming they don’t work, just consider smoking bans.

Governments around the U.S. and the world began imposing them at the beginning of this century, claiming second hand smoke (aka “passive smoking”) caused lung cancer, heart disease, and a number of other serious diseases.

Now, even if that were true, it would still be the right of private property owners to decide whether to allow smoking on their premises or not. But it wasn’t true.

It’s been seven years since a large study showed no correlation between secondhand smoke and lung cancer. Heart disease has not decreased as the banners promised, either. Yet, the bans remain in place.

The TSA will celebrate its 20th birthday next year. It has never caught a terrorist and still consistently fails to detect 95% or more of the dangerous items carried through security on its own tests. It, too, will never go away.

If Americans don’t resist them, business closures, travel bans, contact tracing and the rest of Covid-related government insanity will be here to stay. Any who don’t believe that should ask themselves why Erie County is renovating a historic building into a “Covid-19 response hub.” Not even a government would be so obtuse as to make a long-term capital investment like this to address a problem that will be over in a few months.

All of history shows governments don’t give up power unless they are forced to do so. As a new year dawns, Americans are faced with a clear choice: resist now or spend the rest of their lives reliving 2020 over and over again.

Tom Mullen is the author of Where Do Conservatives and Liberals Come From? And What Ever Happened to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness? Part One and A Return to Common Sense: Reawakening Liberty in the Inhabitants of America.