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There Is a Principle at Stake Here
A lot of folks joined the self-styled “resistance” following President Trump’s election, either because they believed his election was illegitimate (and probably still do, though lengthy investigations pretty well confirm that they’re mistaken), or because they can’t stand losing and so do it badly.
It turns out there really wasn’t anything to resist, per se, following the 2016 election. Far from creating a fascist dictatorship, the administration set about dismantling authoritarian government programs (we call it “deregulating”) and appointing judges who would favor Constitutional values (we call them “civil rights”) over government diktats.
In the wake of the Wuhan virus epidemic, the administration has continued to distinguish itself by not seizing control of the country, and instead letting the states exercise their Constitutionally protected rights to manage their own affairs as they see fit. Our Governors could learn a thing or two from our President. Unfortunately, that would require a bit of humility on their part, and that is too often wanting.
There’s another resistance growing now, one more significant than the last one. This one is composed of people who, unlike the petulant losers of the anti-Trump resistance, are actually experiencing a loss of freedom at the hands of government. These are people who have surrendered their rights based on an understanding that “flattening the curve” was the goal and the justification, but who are now told that they have to stay home and watch their businesses and livelihoods fail because … well, just because. Just for their own good. Just until their governor decides to change his or her mind and let them get on with their lives.
This kind of presumptuous autocratic nonsense is something worth resisting. The curve was flattened. It’s time for the government to get off our backs. Resistance to this arbitrary exercise of authority is growing. Governors need to listen.
That’s not totally true. Dallas County, where Luther lives/works, has released inmates for that reason – inmates that “are not violent offenders, have no history of violence”. It’s been done on a case-by-case basis, not en masse.
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Yes, that was part of the “more to the story” I alluded to earlier. I didn’t mention it because I was running out of space. :)
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Yay! Here’s an article about it.
Part of standing up for what you believe in can be getting to sit in a cell.
True. And she was willing to do so to illustrate the unreasonableness of the rule being applied, as many civil rights activists before her had done. And her willingness to do so got the attention she presumably sought.
It would be good if it got Judge Moye a lot of attention, too. (It’s interesting how seldom his name appears in the news articles about this case, in comparison to Luther and Gov. Abbott.)
Yes. He should become (in)famous.
I agreed with everything to here.
I know that liberals want these lockdowns and Dallas is basically liberal. This patriot very well could also be liberal.
And God knows the kind of government I would be fine living under is one Roderic would absolutely detest just as much as both of us find the level (or kind) of authoritarianism the left likes to be repugnant.
The People get to choose what government they live under… the more local, the better. There are some finicky issues with it – like nationalizing commerce prevents people from largely living under their preferred local government because urban centers move leftward (for good reason) and that’s where jobs are.
But if Dallas people want a strict lockdown, then the judge is enacting the will of Dallas. While I admire this woman’s action in relation to what I view as heavy handedness, she is living among a people whose rules she violated. The authorities were not who needed the apology… it was the people whose rules she violated.
If you want to act oppositional to the rules in your area (chosen by the people around you) in protest to affect change, then you need to be willing to suffer the consequences. Perhaps by doing so, she convinces the people around her that they were wrong to be so draconian. Certainly, the rest of the country is shaming them through shaming their elected official.
The county judge in Dallas has gotten push-back from his pretty liberal commissioners court, where Jenkins didn’t even want to allow craft stores to open, so people could get the materials to make the masks that Jenkins wanted them to wear. So there already had been some opposition to how far the county had gone at the legislative level, though the situation with Luther was different, in that she was at odds with the punishment issued by a district court judge for a state rules violation. But Dallas County was not in lockstep support for onerous restrictions.
Caged and separated from her family? Yup, sounds like the Texas I hear about on MSNBC.
As Sleepy Joe might say, “C’mon, man!” These rules have all been imposed by executive diktat.
Through elected representatives.
You get the government you vote for? Ergo why you keep it as local as possible… so as few people are affected by retarded voting patterns as possible.
I’ve been thinking of Madison’s “If men were angels” line from the Federalist Papers. Many of the ones we elected haven’t been angels recently, and we don’t get to have an election every day.
Representatives that I’m pretty sure most would never have expected to do what they did. And I think that goes for everywhere – not just Dallas County.