Posted on 04/11/2020 7:54:28 AM PDT by Kaslin
Mayor Bill de Blasio has a message for the religiously faithful residents of New York City:
“If you go to your synagogue, if you go to your church, and attempt to hold services after having been told so often not to, our enforcement agents will have no choice but to shut down those services.”
Law enforcement agents rounding up people outside their churches is a painful image, out of place in America. Is it time to ask if we have gone too far in our attempts to contain the Coronavirus?
The reality is beginning to set in: Millions of Christians across the country will be forbidden under various state and local laws to attend church on Easter. Passover in these strange times will be unrecognizable. Have we gone too far? It’s a fair question.
Numbers dominate the news these days. We hear the projected number of people who will likely be infected with the Coronavirus. We’ve heard, of late, significant revisions downward of those numbers. That’s a good thing. We also hear the numbers of people who have lost their jobs, who are now on unemployment because governments across the country have taken swift action with severe consequences. All of those numbers must be processed, rationally, and with balance.
Lives are being upended on a daily basis. We don’t have the numbers for how many lives have felt the crushing effects of government actions. Churches have been forcibly (and under the threat of arrest now) closed. There are estimates that as many as 40 million children are not in school. And the question persists: Have we gone too far?
Many Americans, in certain parts of the country, have been asked to report on their neighbors for violating the shelter-in-place orders. One draconian example comes from America’s heartland, in Dane county in Wisconsin, where the county officials have created a webform to collect information. The authorities have asked individual residents to use that form to report to the government if convenings of more than ten people are taking place. When a government’s invasion into the private sphere becomes so expansive that the law authorities must enlist the help of everyday citizens, we have probably gone too far.
Given the magnitude of the impact of these governments’ actions, isn’t it right and proper that we have a national conversation about the state of affairs? Our system of government and self-governance is a unique experiment in human history. It allows for – in fact, it demands – reflective dialogue. After all, our local governments and the federal government derive their power from the consent of the governed – that is, from us.
Our need for a government that advances public health and safety must be balanced with our individual desire for freedom. The social contract is, itself, a reflection of the balance between the need for security and the desire for freedom. The American political experience for these past 250 years has, more nearly perfectly than any other government structure in history, found that balance.
We need to have this discussion as Americans. Our system of government, where the people govern, requires it.
At Tea Party Patriots, the organization I founded ten years ago to keep the government in check, we are having that conversation. It is one I encourage all Americans, regardless of party affiliation or their personal views of President Trump, to join.
Has the government gone too far? It’s a very American question, rooted in our history as a nation. The Declaration of Independence can be viewed as the collection of Jefferson’s musings about how much the English crown had crossed a line, and had gone too far.
Our nation was born from the examination of government’s proper scope. Nothing could be more necessary, or, frankly, more American, than a broad examination of whether or not our local and state governments have gone too far.
As local governments crack down on religious worshippers, as Americans are banned from gathering together, as we are forbidden to form associations or meet in groups or hold town hall meetings, as we are asked to become informants for the government and turn in our neighbors, has government gone too far?
Let’s have that debate
It is if using this virus to extinguish the Constitution is your goal.
De Blasio looks in the mirror each day says “Napoleon? Alexander? Move over, losers. I’m in charge of New York.”
Cracking down on the faithful while letting murderous women still murder their children says everything you need to know about the society we live in.
JoMa
What about the Mosques?
There’s a reason why New York City is the U.S. epicenter of this viral outbreak. It’s almost as if it became a cursed sh!t-hole the moment Donald Trump changed his state of residency to Florida.
By the way some are acting, that’s exactly what they are doing. The virus is the catalyst, the death of constitution, capitalism and liberty is the goal.
If two million people were really on projection to die in the USA as the models used to force shutdowns predicted, then a debate might be warranted. The only debate we should be having is whether people should be allowed to make such false predictions, as yelling fire in a theater.
the left gets to continue its sacrament in abortuaries daily. The pot shops and subways are open. Religious services are proscribed and vilified. Anyone else see a big problem here?
God gave us brains and he expects us to use them.
My brain tells me things like “Danny a train is coming, get off the tracks.”
God is bigger than the train. There’s probably at least a thousand ways God can save me if I ignore my God given brain and stay on the tracks.
But if I’m that foolish, all bets are off on what God will or will not do.
These churches that insist on meeting in person are being foolish.
Even the churches that are doing drive up meetings are being silly. What’s the point. What does that get you that a virtual service wouldn’t get you. Maybe the ability to go car to car and pass the hat (and the disease).
And The ability of friends to jump out of their cars and go talk to their friends. You know there are adults that will do that and certainly teenagers.
“The prudent see trouble coming and seek refuge. The simple continue and pay the penalty.” - Proverbs 22:3
We've gone too far.
Scientists say coronavirus can spread 13 FEET from sufferers - more than twice the 6ft social distancing gap demanded by government - and that isolating infected people at home is not a good strategy
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8210035/Scientists-say-coronavirus-spread-13-FEET-sufferers.html
It’s not right that evil gets to continue. But that doesn’t make churches defying the lock down any less foolish.
PING. I like your perspective.
Excellent comment.
It’s only a matter of time until the open resistance starts - slowly at first, then rapidly gaining adherents.
Of course, this resistance will be excoriated by the corrupt media, as opposed to all the bull crap resistance that was pushed by the low IQ community organizer vermin.
God has not given us a spirit of fear. Many other public places are open and functioning and yet religious services are singled out. Maybe you are satisfied worshipping in isolation during Holy Week but many of us thirst to worship with other believers at this time.
The argument about cars is ridiculous - if I can get in my car and drive to the store I should be able to get in my car and sit at church . I am exposing no one sitting in my car with my family whether you think it is stupid or not. Judeo Christian worship is being singled out and America needs to wake the stink up.
may your chains rest lightly
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