They Just Don’t Get It

johnnyallensays

It is just so infuriating to see large groups of people defying lawful orders for social distancing and group size limitations to scream their constitutional rights are being stripped away. That they’re living in tyranny. That their religious freedoms are being trampled on, or that their state’s orders are taking away their right to get a haircut.

And let’s not mention that some of them are trying to force entry into their state capital buildings carrying assault weapons and wearing bulletproof vests but not masks. That some of them are waving Nazi and Confederate flags. That some of them are holding signs attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates or vaccines in general. That somebody was holding a sign with the words found over the entrance to  Auschwitz: “ARBEIT MACHT FREI” (work makes you free). This is so offensive on so many levels I don’t know where to begin, so I won’t.

If they really want to experience tyranny, live in North Korea. If they want to know what it’s like to have your religious freedoms trampled on, live in China, Myanmar or Iran. If you want to know what it’s like to have your constitutional rights stripped away, live in Russia. If you want to know what it’s really like stuck in your house for weeks, imagine what John McCain went through for five and a half years in an Hanoi POW prison.

Then there’s a wave of memes and links on Facebook that point out a woman in Texas who was arrested for opening her beauty parlor before the state lifted the order. Or a man arrested for surfing on a closed beach in California. Or the Louisiana pastor for holding Sunday service defying safe-distance or group size orders. That last one is a particularly contentious bone to pick.

It’s exclusively Evangelical Christians who are claiming the state is denying them their First Amendment rights of freedom of religion.
The problem with that is:

  • Nobody is padlocking church doors, although they’d like you to think they are. They can hold services as long as they comply with distancing and group size orders. One pastor came up with the innovative idea of holding drive-in-style services
  • You don’t hear Catholics bitching.
  • “I don’t object to the concept of a deity, but I’m baffled by the notion of one that takes attendance.” – Amy Farrah Fowler from The Big Bang Theory.

So with all these cases, the problem is this: they are failing to comply with a lawful order issued by their state’s governor and Board of Health. In a debate I pointed out that a person can be arrested for failure to comply to a lawful order. But what gives a state the right to infringe on a person’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Ay there’s the rub.

So let’s cut to the chase. Notice that life comes before liberty, a point I made in a previous blog.
Then there’s the Tenth Amendment,

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

A fact that Donald Trump was completely ignorant of when he claimed as president he has “total” authority to re-open states amid the COVID-19 pandemic. He later walked back on that when a White House lawyer told him that he doesn’t.

During a contentious debate on Facebook, a person refuted that Amendment premise with Marbury v. Madison 
I’m not a lawyer, but in the last few years I’ve been very keen on studying Supreme Court (SCOTUS) cases so I looked it up.

Decided in 1803, Marbury remains the single most important decision in American constitutional law. The Court’s landmark decision established that the U.S. Constitution is actual “law”, not just a statement of political principles and ideals, and helped define the boundary between the constitutionally separate executive and judicial branches of the American form of government.  Source – Wikipedia

1803?

What Marbury means is that states cannot make laws that supersede Federal law or violate The Constitution. And it has withstood the test of time particularly since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment or incorporation amendment.
The incorporation doctrine is a constitutional doctrine through which the first ten amendments of the United States Constitution (known as the Bill of Rights) are made applicable to the states through the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Incorporation applies both substantively and procedurally.
Sounds complicated, but the legal view was that The Bill of Rights didn’t apply to state laws. So the 14th took care of that.

It may seem that I’ve diverged quite a bit, but this necessary when we examine the question.

But what gives a state the right to infringe on a person’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Individual state constitutions grant a governor broad powers to protect the public health. The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 and now the Covid-19 Pandemic are two of the most devastating pandemics to hit the U.S. Nothing can deny the draconian restrictions necessary to deal with the Covid-19.
Governors have signed Emergency Declarations to close non-essential businesses, beaches and parks, issue stay-in-place orders, limit sizes of groups and safe distancing orders.

In Ohio, the constitution provides that isolation and quarantine long have been recognized as permissible techniques useful for containing the spread of infectious diseases.
● State Power. The federal government
recognizes the power of the states to institute quarantine to protect their citizens from infectious diseases. (my emphasis)
● Isolation and Quarantine as Function of a State’s Police Power. The preservation of the public health universally is conceded to be one of the duties devolving upon the state as a sovereignty. Whatever reasonably tends to preserve the public health is a subject upon which the legislature, within its police power, may take action.
● Broad Rights in Establishing and Enforcing Quarantine. The right to establish and enforce quarantines is quite broad. To protect communities from epidemic diseases, the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that states have the authority to“enact quarantine laws and health laws of every description.”

SCOTUS cases that affirm the powers of the states are:

The American Bar Association published an analysis and review of the SCOTUS cases entitled Two centuries of law guide legal approach to modern pandemic.

There is NO doubt that these shutdowns are having a devastating impact on people’s lives and the economy. People are very upset and want the economy to open up despite the advice and warnings from epidemiologists. Governors are exercising their states rights and have already opened up. This, however, hasn’t eliminated the order to maintain social distancing.
In Florida, beaches had to be closed again when 8,000 people swarmed the beach and didn’t maintain distance.

These protesters just don’t get it. They’re being selfish. This is NOT about them and their right to get a haircut. It’s about us, and what we collectively need to do to get through this. As of this writing, the U.S. death toll is over 81,000 and rising. They are all gone forever. They lost everything. Opening too soon will result in more deaths that could be avoided.

These protesters have no fucking clue what it’s like to lose liberty. It doesn’t help that the Moron-in-Chief, Donald Trump tweeted,

Liberate Minnesota,

Liberate Michigan,

Liberate Virginia

My God, he’s the President. WTF. An incitement to violence if there ever was one. These three states all have Democratic Governors. The states pushing to open right now are Texas, Florida and Georgia. They have Republican Governors. See a pattern here.


Many of the protesters are from ultra right wing groups.

While protesters in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and other states claim to speak for ordinary citizens, many are also supported by street-fighting right wing groups like the Proud Boys, conservative armed militia groups, religious fundamentalists, anti-vaccination groups and other elements of the radical right. Source The Guardian

These people don’t give shit about the health of every day Americans. They are exercising their right to be

stupid.