Modoc County, which has fewer than 9,000 residents and reported zero cases of the coronavirus, is set to become the first county in California to ease stay-at-home rules Friday, despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s urging to keep them in place for now.

The remote county in far Northern California, which borders Oregon and Nevada, announced that businesses, schools and churches may reopen starting Friday, as long as people stay six feet apart.

“Our businesses are dying and people need to be able to feed their children and pay their rent,” said Heather Hadwick, the deputy director of the county’s Office of Emergency Services. “We live a different life than the rest of California. We’re very rural and naturally socially distanced in our everyday lives.”

There are likely quite a few more such places. And here's a particular sweetener from the Detroit News report:

Separately, at least five other sheriffs departments have said they will not make a priority to enforce the executive orders. Those include the counties of Leelanau, Benzie, Manistee, Mason and Livingston.

Even the cops want nothing to do with this, and when that happens in a tinpot-dictatorship,  a regime usually falls.

Several things stand out.

First, this wide-scale revolt of the little guys, is a signal to elected officials in these blue-state regimes that their draconian lockdown orders, leaving people without food, aren't cutting it. Representative democracy involves the consent of the governed and widespread civil disobedience is a big red flag warning of unjust laws and an inevitable zero consent. No consent, no rule, and with large numbers of people now ignoring lockdown orders, the legitimacy at the top fades. 

"Everyone must do their part," hectored Michigan's leftist Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who banned the sales of garden seeds to people thrown out of work in her economically diverse state, which includes a lot of agricultural havens as well as houses with big green lawns just perfect for carving out vegetable gardens. She also banned trips to getaway cabins, speed boat rides in one's own boat, and other micromanaging stuff, triggering more widespread disobedience and contempt.

"Most businesses in the state have a license that is granted from the state, and they are putting themselves at risk by putting their customers and themselves at risk by opening prematurely," Whitmer said. 

“We need to stay the course and do this in a smart way, and everyone needs to continue doing their part. The devastation from a second wave could dwarf the hardship that we’ve already encountered.” 

Pennsylvania's governor is at least as disgusting as Whitmer:

“We Pennsylvanians are in a fight for our lives. The enemy is a deadly virus, set on destroying us," Wolf said, adopting a war-like footing as he opened a mid-day briefing with an appeal to all Pennsylvanians to stay on a course that he said has been marked by real progress including 37 counties now starting or scheduled to start to reopen, and a hospital system that was never overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases.

“Over this past weekend, some have decided to surrender to this enemy,” Wolf said, adding “these folks are choosing to desert in the face of the enemy, in the middle of a war that we Pennsylvanians are winning and that we must win.”

The governor - with the momentum of federal and state court decisions in support of his emergency declarations at his back - also wielded the dual hammers of threatening to withhold federal pandemic funding from counties who stepped out of line, and threatening businesses that opened prematurely with licensing or other health department sanctions.

Deserting? Doing your part? The arrogance of these people is amazing. And the defiance to this slop is coming from people who are hungry and can't make a living. After all, these blue-state governors are basically telling them: Shut up and starve.

The growing popular defiance is a challenge to the legitimacy of these blue state governments whether they know it or not. There is nothing more ridiculous than a hectoring hag yelling out her prissy micromanaging rules to all the supposed naughty schoolboys, err, citizens, and not a one of them paying any attention. All her barked orders will do is encourage more people to pay no attention, now that the standard has been set. This also explains why Wolf is vowing to crack down so hard, something that will only make him more unpopular now that the defiance bug is out of the bottle.

The defiance also exposes the hypocrisy of these blue states. Haven't these been the very states that condoned, tolerated and bankrolled sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants in the face of federal opposition? How can they complain now about little guys deciding that they too can pick and choose which laws they want to obey, based on their perceived best interests. When the law is discredited, everyone picks their own and carries forward.

The third thing this reveals is the reality of how this lockdown philosophy has played out. Should a one size fits all lockdown order really be permissable over many weeks or months? Should sparsely populated Modoc, California, with zero COVID-19, cases really be following the same anti-contagion rules as crowded Los Angeles or packed New York? One size fits all is a failure and is especially costly for the rural areas.

The fourth thing this highlights is the proof of the pudding - that places ruled by dictators are the places with the worst, the very worst results. Who has the worst COVID-19 casualty rate in the U.S., and maybe the world? New York City, which is a now a coronavirus hellhole. Why did it get that way? Because of its local Whitmers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, to be exact, who dictated to nursing homes that they seed their homes with COVID-19 patients with force of law, or else lose their licenses. That kind of dictatorship is what brought on the worst results, and sure enough it was from blue state governors who claimed to have the people's interests at heart. Are these other blue state governors any different? They make bad call after bad call, revolving around the most power to the state possible.

As the great free market economist Friedrich Hayek highlighted, central-command economies have the biggest failures because central command can never know all the details of ground conditions in order to make good decisions. In their mini-me way, Whitmer, Wolf and the rest of the blue state governors are no different. They need the people making decisions for them, not the other way around. 

One can only hope the people know this - and send that message they so desperately need at the ballot box. There's no other way to teach them.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons public domain