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Adding that “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members,” the court held that in response to a potential epidemic of a life-threatening disease, a state can subject its inhabitants “to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”

Just a few years later, in 1918, in Arver v. United States (better known as the Selective Draft Law Cases), Chief Justice Edward White, writing for a unanimous Supreme Court, upheld the constitutionality of the Selective Service Act, which imposed compulsory military service for adult males to address an “existing emergency”—the shortage of military personnel needed to fight the “war then and now flagrant.”

The court rejected the challenge to the law, even though conscription clearly had a dramatic effect on the liberty of those who were marched off to war against their will, many of whom ultimately died on the field of battle from wounds they suffered or from diseases to which they were subjected.

Citing Supreme Court decisions as the true meaning of the Constitution seems to neglect [...] that the Supreme Court often takes the side of tyrants and destroyers.

So do you hold that government has no authority to enact restraint to protect against an epidemic of disease - nor to call a military draft? If that's not your point, what is?

"[A state]...has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members...a state can subject its inhabitants to such restraint...as the safety of the general public may demand.”

IMO, this thread, especially the comments of you and Andy, should be read by every sheriff in the nation that publicly resists or refuses to enforce a governor's restraints. One clear likely alternative is chaos.

The "community" selected its governor and the working assumption is that the governor generally reflects the will and mindset of the community.

There is a legal remedy in the event of an overreach and the sheriff may have standing to bring an action in a court, but until the matter is resolved the sheriff has a sworn duty to enforce the law.

My point is that the Supreme Court undermines the plain meaning of the Constitution as often as it defends it. Supreme Courts have erred in the past and slavish devotion to courts as the ultimate arbiter of our rights is dangerous in a free republic. I do tend in the direction that court decisions that explicitly or implicitly asserts that the state owns individuals are repugnant to the spirit of the American founding. Such decisions support a concept that could be reasonably described as “contingent slavery’.