Guest Column: Post And Courier’s Flawed Definition Of ‘Leadership’

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by MATT LEBER

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Editor’s note: The following column was provided to our media outlet after The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier refused to publish it as a response to a recent editorial criticizing members of the S.C. Senate’s medical affairs committee.

Unlike the Post and Courier “Editorial Staff,” when I have strong opinions, I am not afraid to put my name on them. These unnamed moral critics who hide behind their nom de plume – “the Editorial Staff” – were reportedly “ashamed and embarrassed” by what they purport to be the pathetic cowardice of me and eleven of my colleagues who voted against the nomination of Dr. Edward Simmer as director of the Department of Public Health. Well, “Editorial Staff,” let’s clear up the difference between leadership and “pathetic cowardice,” as you put it.

When dozens of firefighters and police officers were fired for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, Dr. Simmer was silent. I stood with these men and women in front of the Customs House on a spring day in 2021 as veteran firefighters broke down in tears; one fired just months away from retirement, sacrificed at the altar of Dr. Simmer’s public health crusade. Dr. Simmer concedes that these mass firings were wrong, yet he did not speak up and express his expert opinion. Was this the leadership that the “Editorial Staff” sees in him?

When the VAERS data revealed tens of thousands of deaths associated with the COVID-19 vaccine, did Edward Simmer alter course? Did he champion the right of South Carolinians to choose what they do with their own bodies? Did he promote informed consent, the gold standard of medical ethics? As governments around the world lost all reason and abandoned all judgment, was Dr. Edward Simmer a leader when we needed one most?

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Then again, it’s hard to be a leader over Zoom, alone and masked up, issuing “health” guidance sitting alone in an empty Columbia agency conference room.

Where was Dr. Simmer while our kids’ education accrued years of delay and small children were subjected to eight-plus hours of forced masking a day? Instead of demonstrating leadership, like the Florida Surgeon General, Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD, Dr. Simmer was nothing more than a lackey for the CDC and Dr. Fauci, rubber-stamping one ill-conceived “health” directive after another, rubber-stamping one ill-conceived health directive after another, so many of which have been proven to be wrong, impulsive, and misguided. 

 Make no mistake, there are pathetic cowards in this storyline, but to the chagrin of the “Editorial Staff,” I will not vote for them. I will only vote for leaders, those who will speak up in the face of injustice even when it is difficult or unpopular. As for the “Editorial Staff,” I don’t think much of those who write strong opinions but don’t have the courage to sign their name. However, credit given when credit is due, the “Editorial Staff” were correct about the Charleston County Library Board needing to take an oath of office to the Constitution based on a plain reading of the Law (which they still shamefully refuse to do). Even a tyranny-loving blind squirrel finds a law-loving nut once in a while.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Matt Leber represents District 41 (Charleston, Colleton and Dorchester counties) in the South Carolina Senate.

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