[Creators Syndicate] "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because the law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual." — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
As if nanny state governors had been sleepwalking through the tyrannical shutdowns and their disastrous consequences last spring and summer, as if they were ignorant of the economic destruction of those they barred from going to work or operating their businesses, as if they thought it is lawful to assault natural rights and constitutional guarantees, these same governors are now beginning another wave of interferences with personal liberty.
Are you listening, Governors Whitmer, Newsom, Cuomo, et al?
Slowly, over the past 10 days, while the eyes of the public and the media have been on the counting of votes in the presidential election and the ensuing allegations and litigations, governors in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut and New York have threatened to impose or have begun to impose their unconstitutional, illegal, immoral and illogical efforts to shut down society in order — they claim — to rid the land of the COVID-19 virus.
We just need to flatten the curve for a few weeks more...
By doing so, they have reignited the age-old debate of individual liberty versus public safety. In this case, the safety they claim to be enhancing is safety from disease. Yet, by their executive orders, they have purported to use state law to interfere with freedoms without due process that are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. By doing that, they have set themselves up for criminal prosecutions when normalcy returns.
You would think so, but I ain't holding my breath.
History is repeating itself, without the courageous revolutionaries. It is not my neighbor, or even a thief in the night, who impairs my personal liberty — it is the government. It does so, just as King George did, under the guise of safety. Yet, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written precisely to prevent governments in America — state or federal — from interfering with our liberty, absent a jury trial at which they must prove fault.This jury trial requirement is called due process. It is guaranteed by the Fifth and 14th Amendments, which mandate that the government comply with due process whenever it seeks to impair the life, liberty or property of any person. Of course, a constitutional guarantee is only as reliable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those in whose hands we repose it for safekeeping.
Now, back to these nanny state governors. They have assumed to themselves the powers to write laws and enforce them. That assumption violates the U.S. Constitution and the constitutions of the states in which they were elected, because the power to write laws and the power to enforce laws is required to be separated in America. We call that the separation of powers. It is, according to my late friend Justice Antonin Scalia, the most unique and freedom-protecting aspect of the Constitution, and it applies to states as well as the federal government.
Thus, when governors use police powers to interfere with personal liberty ‐ liberty that is expressly guaranteed by the Constitution ‐ and do so without a trial at which the government proves fault, they have violated both state and federal law, no matter their reasoning. Thus, all these executive orders regulating private personal behavior are profoundly unconstitutional and even criminal.There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution. It is liberty that flows in our veins, not false promises of government safety.
So how many divisions does "Liberty" have?