Posted on 04/13/2021 5:48:57 PM PDT by lightman
To the casual observer, it may seem as though coronavirus lockdowns are now largely behind us. Even Democrat governors seem to have little appetite for new restrictions: in Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer is asking for voluntary compliance, while Gavin Newsom has made plans to largely reopen California by June 15.
Red states are moving even faster. Governor Greg Abbott endedTexas’ capacity limit and mask mandate in March, while both he and Ron DeSantis of Florida have banned “vaccine passports.” Meanwhile, the Supreme Court overturned a California rule limiting at-home religious worship events. CARTOONS | AF Branco View Cartoon
And yet the legal and social groundwork for lockdowns remains firmly in place, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
In 2020, America’s commitment to individual liberty faced a great test. By and large, it failed. The vast majority of Americans demonstrated a ready willingness to choose safety over freedom in a time of crisis, to permit our political leaders to implement an unprecedented latticework of complex and crisscrossing regulations that utterly reshaped daily life in our country.
There was some grumbling, but little true resistance. Generally, the public did what it was told. Mask compliance rates were well over 90 percent. Businesses closed when ordered to do so. Some reopened in secret, but few engaged in direct civil disobedience. The movement had no momentum, no heroes. A few business owners partially filled that role – Shelley Luther, Angela Marsden, and Ian Smith, among others – but the ball never really got rolling.
Reopening, thus far, has been largely contingent on vaccine distribution. In this, we have already ceded a premise which most of us would have balked at a year ago: that society must lock down until there is a cure. We have accepted our freedoms being held hostage to pharmaceutical development, and only good luck on this front prevented us from being locked down for longer.
Those dismayed by proposals for vaccine passports should recognize how unlikely it is that our government would have tried to implement them if they had not seen the vast majority of Americans going meekly along with business closures and mask mandates. As Vladimir Lenin’s adage went, “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” In 2020, American politicians probed the public with bayonets and found mostly mush, a fact of which future aspiring tyrants will take careful note.
Few politicians provided a respite from lockdown mania. President Trump was one, but even he was not entirely consistent on this issue, as when he criticized Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for reopening “too soon.” Most Republican governors, with a couple of admirable exceptions, imposed measures nearly as strict as those implemented by Democrats. Does Greg Abbott deserve credit for ending Texas’ mask mandate in March? Perhaps we should ask instead why he kept it in place for a year.
Nor has there been any judicial remedy. Multiple judges have upheld states’ rights to issue sweeping public health orders, and even the rulings chipping away at these orders (such as the one mentioned above) have been decided on fairly narrow grounds. There was no major case addressing the issue head-on, no landmark decision on the scale of Roe v. Wade that might serve to rebuke the lockdown-happy governors once and for all.
Our Constitution has no written legal safeguards against the government overstepping its bounds in the name of public health, simply because the Framers probably never envisioned such a tyranny. (If they had seen America today, they might have decided to write an anti-lockdown amendment and skip the one about not quartering troops in private homes.) Nor is there strong legal precedent on the matter, with the exception of the 1905 case Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which upheld a law requiring smallpox vaccinations. The case law on lockdowns has been set in our era, and it is not encouraging for lovers of freedom.
Finally, and most concerning, the cultural precedent cannot be undone. We have embraced a neurotically death-averse attitude that would have been utterly foreign to previous generations, demonstrating a willingness to choose the preservation of life at the expense of all other values. We have become a society of Zoomified communication, of petty rules and Karens minding other people’s business, of cult-like faith in a priestly caste of Experts. These social and philosophical trends will be even harder to dislodge than any legal precedent.
History, once written, cannot be erased. This past year has brought a fundamental shift in the relationship between government and the individual, and this will remain in place, regardless of any alleviation of lockdowns over the next few months. President Biden and Lord Fauci might permit you an Independence Day barbecue in your backyard, if you are lucky. But the greater battle has been lost, unless we are willing to boldly and unflinchingly confront just how far we went wrong this year.
Here is a partial list of Pennsylvania patriots:
https://palockdown.com/
Please patronize them!
Sure it does. Start with the Bill of Rights, #1. Then go to number #4. Then #5. Then #6. Then maybe #8. Then #9 and #10.
It’s still fascinating to me that no one - not one reporter, leader, analyst of any sort has referenced the events both medicinal and legal of the Swine Flu pandemic of 1918 which seems to me a perfect parallel of what we’re seeing now from the spread of the virus.
And yet... our leadership makes no legal reference to the actions taken then. Our medical science (on which much of our hygiene laws are actually based!) seems ignorant.
Lockdowns and mask mandates DID occur back in 1918 - but there doesn’t seem to be a corollary attempt to invoke those laws in the same fashion.
Instead we have this totalitarian oppression (as well as a race war).
There are no SMART people in office except for conniving politicians who are stealing power.
When they got away with the lockdowns because of the Chinavirus crap, it was their biggest wet dream come true. They sent the world running for home just as Mommy Nation demanded. They got what they wanted in spades and it was their dream come true. The One World Government off and running. Just as the Bible said over 2,500 years ago by the Prophet Daniel. The truth of Scripture coming true. The liberals/commies/socialists/homos/oneworlders got what they wanted. A world scared of their own shadows and give me safety and peace and I will give up all my individual GOD given rights!!! Yup, they got more than they bargained for. They won.
The lockdowns over the kungflu are like the “boy who cried wolf”. If, God forbid, we have a real high mortality epidemic, who will believe it at first?
I am in total agreement. Houston TX has a county judge. She is the CEO of the county. She has been hair on fire panic mongering even to this day. “Condition RED. STAY AT HOME. STAY SAFE.”
The next time we get a hurricane, she will be giving all kinds of advice, but she has no credibility and I am thinking that a lot of people will ignore her and end up getting hurt.
In a hurricane, it might be like the volcano at St. Vincent where the gov’t wants to evacuate only covid vaccinated citizens.
And frankly, I’d take my chances at that point.
Let’s hope that is wrong. A lot of people were/are fooled. Now, not so much.
We know we were lied to and manipulated.
It won’t be so easy again.
I HOPE.
Comparing public health decrees from the Spanish Flu to the last year is absolutely comparing apples and oranges. There were no state-wide mask mandates or lockdowns. Any restrictions were done on a local basis, and lasted just a few weeks.
Don’t go there.
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One reason I left Harris County was that County Judge I call “Junior Achievement “. Then I found she had some background with FARC and Sendero Luminoso.
BS!
There were absolutely mask mandates and town lockdowns
Read the history!
Not nationwide lockdowns. I recall reading about ONE town, in CO, that locked itself down. Schools and towns, across the country, varied, by locale.
And, I thought mask wearing was give and take...and, mostly in the western states.
She is associated with FARC?
Figures. She is from Colombia.
Bet she has some contacts with the cartels also.
Bkmk
Uh, that’s what I wrote. There were no STATE-WIDE lockdowns or mask mandates. And those restrictions that were enforced within individual TOWNS and CITIES lasted a few weeks, not well over a year.
I’ve read several books on the subject while researching my own book. Did you even read my post?
Mask mandates in San Francisco I believe were in two phases of three weeks each. Hardly what we have today.
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