‘There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.” That, yet again, was the Justice Department’s message as it intervened on Sunday on the side of a Virginia church, which is suing Governor Ralph Northam’s lockdown against communal worship.That's right, and it's crucial to fight for that principle. Far more Americans have died in wars to defend our freedoms than are at risk today even under the plausible worst-case scenarios. We cannot simply lay down what they won and preserved at so costly a sacrifice.
I'm not opposed to constitutional, sensible acts to limit the damage. Even where religion is concerned, it's reasonable for the government to issue warnings, advice, even attempt persuasion that people ought to voluntarily choose to forgo communal worship. It's not acceptable to simply ban it.
4 comments:
Northam isn't the only one who doesn't believe our Constitution should be allowed to get in his way, nor are State governments. The Kansas City, MO, government is demanding by-name surveillance and those names and activities be passed to the city's government.
https://fox4kc.com/news/kansas-city-will-require-businesses-to-refuse-entry-to-customers-who-dont-provide-contact-information/
“Our goal isn’t to see what everyone is doing and be Big Brother,” Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas explained.
Right.
Eric Hines
“...Lucas lied.”
But they’re finding out that they have less power than they believe. If you don’t let Americans be free, Americans just go do it anyway.
https://reason.com/2020/05/04/lockdown-is-ending-whether-governments-approve-or-not/
That’s true here too. Quarantine is over in Western North Carolina, except in Asheville and with a few exceptions. The Blue Ridge Parkway and the Nantahala are officially closed, but you won’t see any Rangers if you go. They’re studiously avoiding noticing the widespread ignoring of orders.
If the government allows the violations of the Constitution, it destroys its own legitimacy. If they want it back, they need to get with Barr’s program.
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Initiative-seeks-to-challenge-Trump-s-online-15241493.php
When I hear that Gloria Steinem is a Clowns in Action operative, nudging feminism along to divide Americans from each other, and then that military/clowns in action disinformation agents are starting in on the political campaign and information management... this is becoming not just a real shadow/invisible war, but an overt one. They can't or aren't even trying to hide it any more.
It's like the OPSEC filters has somehow been disengaged.
http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/inaug2.htm?fbclid=IwAR08FdmaeWWNmbJ57fhSB1jjq_Fe-3mmDH8JdbTbgZyFyhl5hz6-JHfSbfc
Trum is fighting to finish the war Abe Lincoln almost finished.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it--all sought to avert it. While the inaugeral [sic] address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissole [sic] the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.
One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!" If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope--fervently do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether"
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.
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