Perhaps, in retrospect, the most important turning point in the evolution of the contemporary far-right elite occurred in April 2020, just a month into a pandemic that would ultimately become a mass extinction event, killing more than 7 million people worldwide. Condemning public health restrictions, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said , “There are more important things than living.” Our nation’s founders would not have agreed. The point of human society and government, wrote John Locke,