Time to turn the DUmocrats plan on its head...use the crisis to dismantle each and every one of their failed policies and anti-Constitutional burro-cracy!
Posted on 03/18/2020 3:17:55 PM PDT by jfd1776
Cities, colleges, and school districts are ordering students to study online from home; dioceses are cancelling their public mass schedules; states are ordering restaurants to close and demanding that theaters and conventions cancel or reschedule.
We are seeing commerce shut down over fears of the Wuhan virus.
While there’s nothing to say, politically, about the choices of private organizations like churches and businesses to go on hiatus, there is indeed a constitutional crisis erupting as governments engage in actual mandates of this nature. Our Constitution clearly requires that all takings require just compensation, and we haven’t heard these states offering to compensate restaurants for lost diners or theatergoers (most of our states are bankrupt themselves; how could they?).
There is a reason why our Founding Fathers designed a government that was extremely limited in scope. If they didn’t limit the powers of elected officials, eventually, some would surely take it upon themselves engage in tyranny of one kind or another, whether it be the closing of a newspaper because they didn’t like its politics, or the setting aside of land because some well-connected special interest desired it, or the closure of businesses out of some fear, perhaps even a legitimate fear, choosing on their own, as the government, to trade one ill (bankruptcy, unemployment, and poverty) for another ill (a random chance of catching a contagious sickness with a random chance of death).
This is not to say that the chance of illness isn’t real, and even significant for some. Of course it is.
But the questions we face are, is the cure worse than the disease, and is it really government’s role to make this decision for us?
After all, we have always had the right to self-quarantine, when a situation warranted it. Before our state governments started imposing such edicts in mid-March, countless businesses and schools across the country were already acting on their own, without the stick of government spurring them on, to switch to remote learning and remote employment.
In short, the private sector was already taking measures to address the issue. Whether the fear of mass contagion was rightly placed or overblown, as long as the private sector chose how to respond, it was those individuals’ choice to do so.
But when the government steps in, we now have a place to lay blame, a place we might not have had otherwise.
Under the takings clause of the constitution, governments who place these orders must make provision to make people whole again.
But how can they do that? The sheer volume of economic destruction is already incalculable, from stock market losses to lost ticket sales and lost dinner revenue. If they do not make restitution, these elected officials – governors, mayors, etc. - are in violation of our nation’s highest law and must be prosecuted and imprisoned for such a massive crime. But if they do make restitution, they can only do so by taxation and/or an inflation of the currency, which hurts everyone.
As our Founding Fathers knew, once the government intervenes, there is no winning.
Why is the government doing this?
Yes, it is to protect some lives. Maybe many lives. But at what cost? The economic downturn that results from this action will also cause many others to suffer and even die, because that’s how government action works, when it interferes in the market: it shifts burdens, it doesn’t eliminate them.
Let’s just think of the hospitality and entertainment industry, for a start. How many theaters, convention centers, hotels, travel agents, car rental firms, caterers and restaurants will be unable to weather this storm, and will never reopen after a month without customers? Ten percent? Twenty? Thirty? How many thousands of people worked for these businesses, until their dictatorial governors took the arbitrary step of closing them down?
Of the people broken economically by this manufactured recession, many will find themselves unable to recover; many will be broken physically or emotionally by it (remember the many suicides in the aftermath of the crash that started the Great Depression). There will be people addicted to drugs or drink, or rendered homeless as a result. Yes, that happens anyway, to some, but when the government owns the blame, it’s another matter, isn’t it?
Let’s consider some of the other risks in American life: Old people, walking home in the inner city, too weak to fight off attackers, are mugged or killed in alleys. All the time. Young women, in the same neighborhoods, walking home from work, are robbed or raped in those same alleys. All the time. That’s inner city life today.
These are severe risks – thousands and thousands of such crimes occur in our inner cities every year (in some cities, they reach the thousands every month) - and we could almost completely eliminate these crimes if we simply enforced an absolute all-ages curfew from dusk until dawn. Unfortunately, it would also be incredibly limiting to the quality of life for the residents of these crime zones. So, we don’t do it.
Drivers and pedestrians alike are at risk of automotive accidents. Hundreds of thousands are injured, and thousands are killed, year after year, in often horrific crashes. We could put an end to this risk too, if we really wanted to, by banning vehicular transport. Restrict people from motorized vehicles, and we save hundreds of lives. Unfortunately, turning the clock back 120 years in this way would also be incredibly limiting to both the leisure and commercial aspects of American life. So, we don’t do it.
The same can be said of so many arenas of human life. We could eliminate sports injuries by banning sports; we could eliminate mountain climbing injuries by completely closing the national parks off from the public.
But these are the United States of America, a nation built on the restraint of government and the embrace of individual liberty. One of the key themes of our nation, from its very birth, is Benjamin Franklin’s maxim, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Our freedom has risks, but it also has incredible rewards.
We take this position for a reason. It is both a matter of our philosophy of individual liberty and a genuine, even proven, belief that it genuinely works. The American transformation from basic settlement to advanced civilization in just a couple hundred years is testament to the success of this approach.
What we see before us, unfolding in a matter of days, at breakneck speed, is an almost-complete abandonment of the American way of life.
Copyright 2020 John F Di Leo
John F Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation manager, writer and actor. A former county chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party, his columns have been found in Illinois Review for eleven years now.
yes
deliberately so
We are doing all this because if we don’t the meltdown of large urban healthcare centers will spread to the streets in minutes. We are doing this so we don’t have to shoot thousands of rioting retards.
But to do nothing? That's not an alternative.
The economy will come back. The people will rise again to the occasion.
And we will go back to where we were before this monster invaded our country.
And again....Thank you China. /s
Posting blog trash will save us, because you know better than everyone.
BTTT!!!!
Bingo....and that is the bottomline for today ladies and gentlemen, succinct and to the point on March 18,2020! Thank-you and goodnight!
(in other words good post...we can concentrate on getting rid of any bastards later, after the immediate danger has been mitigated, if they don’t wish to give up on their dreams of socialist dictatorship)
Have been for a long time.
It is now accelerating at an accelerating rate
The constitution is not a suicide pact. And this is not a first. These types of actions were taken during the Spanish Flu.
The left sure are busy now using the flu gig to spread panic to the lemmings media throw gas on the fire.
People have lost the idea of how to think for themselves it’s like they have a ring in their nose like a bull.
Time to turn the DUmocrats plan on its head...use the crisis to dismantle each and every one of their failed policies and anti-Constitutional burro-cracy!
“is the cure worse than the disease”
Yes, and to them, worth every loss if it gets Trump.
With each passing day, it becomes clearer, that the most troubling aspect of all of this is not the virus - it is that so many Americans are wholly unprepared for any form of reality that keeps them from living out “their best lives”, in their fantasy world play land.
Way too many are selfish, greedy and unbelievably, painfully stupid.
Lord help us.
Pay no attention to the humble clown.
Yes. Without hard facts or numbers these shutdowns are without authority and nothing more than scare tactics.
It should come as no surprise that Americans were so docile in the face of the Spanish Flu. After all, they had no problem loading themselves into ships to fight a stupid war thousands of miles away just because some @ssholes in Washington thought it was a good idea.
Just wait until Illinois defaults. They will not be able to float bonds. They are having a huge sales tax hit. The income tax is going to get killed. So IL and NJ are going to test default in the next 18 months.
Just wait until Illinois defaults.
Probably intentionally. Everybody is lined up for freebies now because Uncle Sugar is handing them out.
its just the flu, spread it around.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.