LA Restaurateur Fights Hypocritical Leftist Politicians And Their Anti-Rights Lockdowns, Vows To Stay Open

P. Gardner Goldsmith | December 6, 2020
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The cracks are expanding.

Because hard-working people are fed-up with the attacks on their rights, and they are fighting back.

 

In virtually every state where vampiric politicians avoid the Constitution like a cross or holy water, business owners, consumers, parents, and homeowners are rising up to resist the political edicts that have sucked away their liberty. And now, well-known Los Angeles area restaurateur and Food Network contributor Andrew Gruel is breaking the chains those Lilliputian leftists have tried to place on him, his employees, his suppliers, and his customers.

In a powerful December 3 Twitter post, Gruel told those who follow him, and anyone else who would hear, that he was done trying to accommodate the adhoc, nonsensical demands of Gavin Newsom and local LA politicians, and his post quickly made news across the country. 

First, he apologized for possibly looking scruffy, offering a potential dig at Democrat Senator Nancy “Hair-Stylin’” Pelosi by noting that he “hasn’t had a haircut since March.” Then, he informed potential “haters” that he and his team take the pandemic seriously, and he logically laid out the situation and the reasoning behind his stance against the political madness that has attacked his restaurants, Slapfish and Big Parm:

At every single juncture along the way here, from the beginning until today, we have listened to all of the advice from our government officials, only to be shut down over and over and over again and then not compensated for the elements we put in place for our businesses to protect our customers.

Of course, that “advice” isn’t just advice. It’s tax-funded tyranny. And Gruel is ready to fight the tyrants.

We shut down indoor dining – no problem. I got a warehouse full of plexiglass right now okay? We went outdoors – now that’s getting shut down. I just put thousands of dollars into outdoor heaters. There is zero scientific evidence that outdoor dining is contributing to the rise in cases related to this, alright?

What we’re seeing here is a man pushing back against American fascism: the in-name-only ownership of a business that is told by government how to operate. And it’s a fascism that appears to give large, politically-cozy corporations a lot more leeway than small, independent entrepreneurs like Gruel. To that point, he notes:

I am only saying we can continue to dine outdoors because I can get on an airplane and I can fly and eat and do whatever I want – and don’t tell me it’s the HEPA filters because that’s not the case. You don’t turn those on until you get onto the plane. Until then everybody’s fornicating on top of each other. I can go into Walmart. Nobody wears a mask at Walmart! I can get a pink cockatoo for my Christmas tree but I can’t go and dine outdoors at a restaurant. I can go to Target, Amazon is making tons of money — all big business is getting rich. OK! Outdoor dining does not lead to (COVID19). Therefore, screw that. We’re staying open. Outdoors. It’s that simple. I’m not an a–hole — the governor is!

And Gruel wasn’t finished with his Declarations of Independence. As Paula Froelich reports for The New York Post:

In a follow up Twitter video on Friday titled ‘Another update from the mind of a business owner being shutdown,’ Gruel continued — this time slamming not just Newsom, but San Francisco Mayor London Breed, LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl and other politicians for their shameless hypocrisy and ‘virtue signaling.’

And that hypocrisy is, indeed, shameless, and stunning.

‘We find that LA County supervisor Sheila Kuehl bans outdoor dining and then that exact night goes to a restaurant to eat outdoors,’ he continued. ‘San Jose mayor (Sam Liccardo – who broke California’s Thanksgiving Day rules) same situation… What’s happening is we’re being told to do one thing when the people telling us to do that aren’t even following their own rules. There is no science backing up that eating outdoors is leading to a spike in coronavirus cases.’ Gruel takes a breath and then says: ‘You see the hypocrisy. Really think about this here: No one is following their own rules. How serious can those rules be if they’re not following their own rules!?’

And, as Froelich notes, Gruel closes by adroity describing the hypocritical tyrants’ behavior, saying, “Virtue-signaling.”

Which rings true with many of us who have either experienced the hardships rained down upon independent business people, employees, and consumers, or who have an appreciation for something that these politicians evidently prefer to overlook: human rights that are supposedly protected by the US Constitution, and in this case, the California Constitution. 

I’ve mentioned it in previous pieces on COVID19 lockdown mandates, and want to stress this again: not only do such lockdowns and mandates infringe on much of the Bill of Rights, and, in this case, the right to peaceably assemble that is protected by both the U.S. Bill of Rights and the California Constitution, but these kinds of arbitrary government attacks on commerce also are completely adversarial to the Contract Clause of the U.S. Constitution (Art 1, Section X), which prohibits state politicians from interfering with the fulfillment of private contract. I reiterate this because, when compared to the clear prohibition against state governments breaking people’s private contracts, these kinds of mandates and orders have about as much power to stand as blades of grass in a tornado. 

And now, people like Gruel are flexing their own power as sovereign individuals, and they, too, have the force of the storm. It’s the storm of freedom, and political hacks will not be able to stand against it.

 

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