Here is a pop quiz on the Constitution. What is the first freedom protected by the Bill of Rights? If you guessed speech or press, then you are close. The first protected freedom is religion. The two religion clauses in the First Amendment keep the government out of our pockets for religious purposes and out of our churches for all purposes. That was, at least, the intent of the framers.
The tyrannical behavior of many state governors, who have issued executive orders purporting to regulate private behavior on private property — even religious behavior in houses of worship — and. . .
For two months now, most of America has endured a government-imposed lockdown. I hate to use that word — lockdown — as it connotes locking prisoners into their cells during prison disturbances. But it is the word that the government itself uses when referring to its orders of confinement.
Today, we are the government's prisoners. Wear your mask. Stay at home. Don't go to work. Don't open your business. Don't go to church. And, for heaven's sake, don't gather in any group larger than 25 — unless. . .
The governors of all 50 states, and the mayors of many large cities, have assumed unto themselves the powers to restrict private personal choices and lawful public behavior in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
They have done so not by enforcing previously existing legislation but by crafting their own executive orders, styling those orders as if they were laws, using state and local police to enforce those so-called laws and — presumably when life returns to normal and the courts reopen — prosecuting the alleged offenders in court.
It is hard to believe that any. . .
What if the government has it wrong — on the medicine and the law?
What if face masks can't stop the COVID-19 virus? What if quarantining the healthy makes no medical sense? What if staying at home for months reduces immunity?
What if more people have been infected with the virus in their homes than outside them?
What if there are as many credible scientists and physicians who disagree with the government as those who agree with it? What if the government chooses to listen only to scientists and physicians who would tell it what it wanted. . .
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty." — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
To Thomas Jefferson, the fulcrum between the people and the government they have elected was fear. He argued succinctly that the government would only respect liberty if it feared losing power. Today, the relationship between people and government is power. Does the government have the power to tell us how to make personal choices, or do we have the power to tell the government to take a hike?
Stated differently, does the government work for. . .
I have been taking some heat from friends and colleagues for my steadfast defense of personal liberties and my arguments that the Constitution — when interpreted in accordance with the plain meaning of its words, and informed by history — does not permit the government to infringe upon personal freedoms, no matter the emergency or pandemic. For those who agree with me, worry not. We will persevere. For those who trust the government, worry a lot. You are not in good hands.
The purpose of the Constitution is to establish the government and to limit it. Some of the limitations. . .
The loss of liberty is at hand.
Every day in America, mayors and governors — not one of whom is constitutionally or lawfully empowered to author laws and assign punishments for their noncompliance — are imposing new standards of behavior that nullify liberty in the name of public safety.
I have been writing about this since the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States — about the consequences to personal liberty in a free society that are inevitable when those in whose hands we have reposed the Constitution for safekeeping have failed us. Their failures have also been a. . .
During the past month, as Americans have been terrified of the coronavirus, another demon has been lurking ready to pounce. It is a demon of our own creation. It is the now amply manifested inability of elected officials to resist the temptation of totalitarianism. And it is slowly bringing about the death of personal liberty in our once free society.
It is one thing for public officials to use a bully pulpit to educate and even intimidate the populace into a prudent awareness of basic sanitary behaviors — even those which go against our nature — to impede the spread. . .
That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves. — Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)
When American colonists were oppressed by governance from Britain, the word most frequently uttered in pamphlets and editorials and sermons was not "safety" or "taxes"; it was "freedom." Yet, two intolerable acts of Parliament so assaulted personal freedom that they broke the bonds with the mother country irreparably.
The first was the Stamp Act of 1765, which required colonists to have government stamps. . .
"If the provisions of the Constitution be not upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, they may as well be abandoned." — Justice George Sutherland (1862-1942)
In his 2008 book "Taking Rights Seriously," the late professor Ronald Dworkin explored the origins and governmental treatment of human liberty. He argued that Thomas Jefferson — who wrote the Declaration of Independence — and James Madison — the scrivener at the Constitutional Convention and the author of the Bill of Rights — were clear in their articulations that the premise of America at its birth. . .