The Index of Economic Freedom published annually by researchers at the Heritage Foundation indicated on Monday that the degree of liberty offered by the American economy has continued to decline over the past year.

The conservative think tank granted the United States a rating of 70.6, constituting a decline of 1.5 points since last year and the nation’s lowest score in the history of the project. The “size and scope of government” was identified as one of the most salient factors weighing upon the American economy.

“The world and America are at a crossroads. Too many countries have renounced basic economic principles leaving communities to suffer the consequences,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said in a press release. “They must choose either the narrow path of self-governance, human dignity, and ordered liberty, or the broad path of an economy run by the managerial elite with no room for dissent or responsibility. One path leads to prosperity, and the other leads to ruin.”

The United States retained high ratings in categories such as property rights, investment freedom, and business freedom. The nation’s lowest ranking comes in the domain of government spending since public debt is more than 128% of gross domestic product.

“The United States has one of the world’s most dynamic economies but has been undergoing policy challenges that undermine its long-term economic competitiveness,” the think tank said. “Since assuming office in 2021, President Joseph Biden has pursued and implemented policies that have expanded the size and scope of the federal government. Unchecked deficit spending and government debt have accelerated, and inflation undercuts economic livelihood.”

Biden has claimed that he presided over a “record decrease” in deficit spending over the past two years. Although he oversaw a decline in the deficit from $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020 and $2.8 trillion in fiscal year 2021 to $1.4 trillion in fiscal year 2022, according to data from the Office of Management and Budget, he has failed to mention that the record spending occurred as a result of legislation passed to mitigate fallout from the lockdown-induced recession. The deficit posted last year still significantly exceeds those witnessed in the years before the crisis.

Although the United States ranked twenty-fifth in both the 2022 and 2023 indices, the global average economic freedom score declined from 60.0 to 59.3 over the same period. Singapore, Switzerland, Ireland, and Taiwan are the world’s highest-ranked economies for economic liberty.

Heritage Foundation research fellow Anthony Kim commented that the environmental, social, and corporate governance movement, also known as ESG, has inhibited the economies of the United States and other nations. “Economic freedom correlates significantly with overall well-being, which includes such factors as health, education, the environment, innovation, societal progress, and democratic governance,” he said in the press release. “The true path to ensuring environmental, social, and governance improvements lies in focusing on policies that enhance economic freedom.”

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Critics of the ESG movement assert that the investment philosophy seeks outcomes in social causes, such as reducing carbon emissions and achieving racial diversity, in a manner that compromises or distracts from profit maximization. The movement is popular in Europe and elsewhere in the developed world.

You would think The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and NPR, not to mention all the “fact-check” scammers, would be furious with Anthony Fauci.

For the better part of three years, these organizations have dutifully worked on Fauci’s behalf dutifully and aggressively attacking anyone who dared posit that COVID might have originated in the mysterious bat virus lab located at Ground Zero of the pandemic. The mere suggestion not only indicated that anyone harboring such a suspicion knew nothing about how viruses mutate, but he or she was also a racist in a tinfoil hat.

If your IQ is above room temperature, you suspected all along the mysterious bat virus almost certainly leaked out of the mysterious bat virus lab. Congratulations! Your gut served you better than Fauci’s decades studying virology. And your instincts were sharper than the intellects of his Big Media mouthpieces.

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Now that the Department of Energy has joined the FBI and a Senate investigation in declaring a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is a plausible theory for the pandemic, the aforementioned media outlets surely feel a deep sense of shame for misleading Americans for years. After all, it was never enough for these outlets to simply report what differing experts said. They had to crush the lab leak theory and marginalize anyone who gave it consideration.

Here are just a few headlines capturing how desperate the liberal media was to make you feel like an idiot for thinking the mysterious bat virus lab might have unleashed a mysterious bat virus:

“Scientists Debunk Lab Accident Theory of Pandemic Emergence,” NPR, April 22, 2020 “Senator Tom Cotton Repeats Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins,” New York Times, Feb. 17, 2020 “Fact Checker: Was the new Coronavirus accidentally released from a Wuhan lab? It’s doubtful,” Washington Post, May 1, 2020 “Trump’s Wuhan Lab Coronavirus Conspiracy Theory Is Bogus, According To Uh, Everyone,” Vice News, May 5, 2020 “Lab leak Covid-19 theory is like something out of a comic book, virologist says,” CNN, March 31, 2021

In addition to the media, the largely bogus “fact check” industry and social media companies were all in on stamping out any suggestion that the mysterious bat virus emerged from the mysterious bat virus lab. Facebook and Twitter labeled such claims “misinformation,” and fact-check organizations urged advertisers to cut off revenue to sites that entertained the theory. They have long since quietly dropped their opposition to what they once branded a “right-wing conspiracy.”

To be sure, the Department of Energy, one of 18 government departments and agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, did not say a lab leak had been proven. Nor did the FBI or the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. They, unlike other government agencies, have simply determined that it is plausible, and to varying degrees, perhaps likely. And as far back as May of 2020, researchers at the government-backed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory wrote a paper saying a lab leak was possible.

President Joe Biden, in May of 2021, even acknowledged that the mysterious bat virus may have leaked from the mysterious bat virus lab. His predecessor had said as much a year earlier, but as we all know, he was a bad orange man and nothing he said could ever be given credence by the media.

So why are we only now, three years later, allowed to consider the mysterious bat virus lab leak theory? Because Fauci and his National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which may have helped fund research to make the virus more dangerous through a grant to EcoHealth Alliance, didn’t want anyone looking too closely. While adoring liberal lamebrains were deifying the octogenarian doctor with “In Fauci We Trust” yard signs and votive candles, emails uncovered via FOIA requests show Fauci and his former boss, Dr. Francis Collins, were scrambling to stop the lab leak theory from gaining traction.

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“Wondering if there is something NIH can do to help put down this very destructive conspiracy,” Collins wrote on April 16, 2020, in reference to a Fox News report on the lab-leak theory. “I hoped the Nature Medicine article on the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 would settle this. But probably didn’t get much visibility. Anything more we can do?”

“I would not do anything about this right now,” Fauci replied. “It is a shiny object that will go away in time.”

Thankfully, Fauci finally went away in December. The lab leak theory he tried so hard to bury isn’t going anywhere.