This is an opinion column.

Alabama Rep. Brock Colvin, a Republican from Albertville, up there on Sand Mountain, is backing a bill that would forever prevent the State Health Department or other government busybodies from forcing anyone to wear a mask.

Not just to guard against COVID, but whatever comes next. Ebola. Face-eating zombie disorder. Who knows what the world has in store?

“I don’t believe [the government] should have that authority,” Colvin said in the Alabama Reflector. “I think that people are smart enough to make those decisions for themselves.”

Au contraire, mon frère.

Excuse my French, but we live in a country – in a world – where doctors have to warn people that it’s a terrible, terrifying idea to braise chicken in NyQuil. Yet the sleepy chicken challenge, as the Internet called it, was a thing.

Suffice it to say Rep. Colvin and I disagree.

Just this spring, a woman in Waukesha, Wisc., listened to all the warnings from the MRI technicians. She told them she had no metal on her person, and climbed onto the table for her scheduled scan, according to the FDA.

But somehow, some way, some why, she concealed a loaded pistol on her body as she slid into that giant magnet. As the FDA later put it, “the handgun was attracted to the magnet and fired a single round.”

She shot herself. In the buttocks.

Mr. Colvin assumes too much.

I’m reminded of Birmingham’s former mayor, Larry Langford, who, just months before he was convicted of corruption and sent to prison for the rest of his useful life, held a press conference to blame others for his problems.

Stupidity was everywhere, he argued. He had the city print shop create a sign to help make his point. On it, a series of arrows surrounded the words “Cycle of Stupidity.” Langford did not realize, as he appeared beneath that sign, that one of the arrows pointed straight down at him.

We live in a world where a third of millennials aren’t fully convinced the Earth is round, according to a study you can read about in Scientific American. But don’t worry, millennials. That publication points out that it’s not just you.

Studies have shown that humans around the globe – or flat out across it, for a third of the millennials – have reversed a long trend of increasing IQs, and have headed in the opposite direction since Captain & Tennille’s “Love Will Keep Us Together” topped the charts in 1975. We’re losing IQ points every generation, according to several studies.

But we don’t really need academic research to tell us that. We saw the Jerry Springer Show. And now all we have to do is look around. At Florida man. At the Tide pod challenge. At that YouTuber who crashed his plane for views, and ended up in prison. At Congress.

Or at Montgomery. Always Montgomery.

You will recall that Robert Bentley was not just a popular family values governor with a 50-year marriage and a reputation as a smart, decent guy. He was, and is, a doctor. But that didn’t keep him from doing stupid stuff – like sending romantic texts to his sweetheart on a device that was synced to the iPad he gave his wife. That’s his ex-wife now. He’s an ex-governor.

People don’t always study up or pay attention. Less than half Americans – Sen. Tommy Tuberville among them – can name the three branches of government.

And people make terrible decisions. All the time.

You’d think Colvin would know that. He comes from that part of our state immortalized by A&E as “Meth Mountain.” It was in response to that show that laws were passed to limit how much Sudafed you could buy. Because people, legislators figured, weren’t smart enough to police themselves.

Colvin might figure people are smart enough to decide whether they should wear a mask to protect themselves. But then, that’s not really the issue. If and when the next epidemic comes – a new COVID strain or communicable brain-eating alien mad cows – the future won’t be able to help us protect each other. If, that is, that future has to deal with Mr. Colvin’s mask ban.

That’s just not smart.

John Archibald is a two-time Pulitzer winner at AL.com.