Day 138: COVID-19 “Deliver Us From Evil”

 

When I say “deliver us from evil” I am not referring to the plague arising from the natural world; I am referring to acts of men and women in power restricting the liberties of individuals in the name of “public safety.” First, let me say something that is not apparently obvious to some in the younger generations: It is evil to force another to submit to your arbitrary will. There are times when one is made to submit because of the crimes they commit. But peaceful persons doing nothing but pursuing their own ends and desires without depriving others of their life, liberty, and property are entitled to do so.

When we review our Constitution there are five actors described in our national structure: The Legislature, The Executive, The Judiciary, The Several States, and The People. The Legislature represents the People having been elected by them to set law. The head of the Executive is selected by the People and executes the laws. The Judiciary ensures that the Legislature and the Executive act within and in accord with the Constitution that the People created. Several States have governments and structures set up by the People of those respective states. The People are sovereign individually and are sovereign collectively in forming their government and selecting their leaders.

At least that is the way it is supposed to be.

The Kaiser Family Foundation just published Litigation Challenging Mandatory Stay at Home and Other Social Distancing Measures. It is a helpful, if unhappy, summary of the legal landscape at the moment.

Mandatory social distancing measures during public health emergencies, such as stay at home orders, are based on states’ general authority to protect the general health, safety, morals, and welfare, known as the police power. The police power is a very broad power through which governments regulate individual rights to protect the interests of society as a whole. Common examples of the police power are safety regulations to reduce fire hazard, zoning laws that regulate land use, and laws prohibiting gambling or prostitution. Examples of social distancing measures adopted under the police power in the current coronavirus pandemic include mandatory stay at home orders, mandatory traveler quarantines, closures of non-essential businesses, bans on large gatherings, school closures, and limits on bars and restaurants and other public places.

***

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recognition of state use of the police power to regulate individual rights in the interest of protecting public health dates back to 1905. In Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the Court upheld a government requirement for smallpox vaccination when that virus was spreading. The Court set out the legal test, still applied today, which provides that a state’s exercise of the police power to promote public safety during a public health emergency will be upheld unless the order has no real or substantial relation to public health or the measure beyond all question is a plain palpable invasion of fundamental rights.

***

Most courts to date generally have allowed stay at home orders issued during the current crisis to remain in place to protect public health, despite restrictions on individual rights such as free speech, peaceful assembly, travel, and free exercise of religion.

***

Adoption of social distancing measures continues to be a subject of policy as well as political debate. Courts generally have upheld these measures in the interest of protecting public health during emergencies, despite acknowledging the restriction on individual rights, in cases brought by individuals and groups seeking to fully exercise those rights. Three cases to date have asked for Supreme Court review. The Supreme Court has denied stays in all three cases in which plaintiffs have appealed to block state stay at home orders.  Other cases are pending review at district courts and courts of appeals. While state and local actions to open up might make some of the current litigation moot, states may decide to re-instate some of these orders if there are new flares in COVID-19 over the coming year, and we can expect similar legal challenges.

In summary, if you think the courts are going to uphold the sovereignty of the individual when the government declares an emergency think again.

This is a challenge to our fundamental rights: When will the courts step in to declare that an “emergency” is bogus? If they never do, how can the people be sovereign? Will not evil men and women use this constitutional “loophole” to control us and maintain power? What rights cannot be overridden by a declaration of emergency; the power to change our government by vote?

Interestingly this threat to individual sovereignty comes from the states and not the federal government. The federal government is one of limited powers; only that which is specified in the Constitution of the United States. That point is expressed directly in the 10th Amendment to the Constitution:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Our state government is presumed to have all powers except those reserved to individuals as natural rights and such other rights as the people have reserved in the several statutes passed by their representatives in the state legislature.  The 14th amendment to the Constitution, adopted after the Civil War, underlined the fact that individuals have natural rights beyond the authority of the state, not just federal, government:

Section 1.

… No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

And herein lies the battleground. Will the federal courts enforce those natural rights? They are failing us in the early tests, will they continue to fail? What then?

[Note 1: I will be arbitrarily ending the daily COVID-19 posts on Day 150. It is clear now more than ever that this is not a public health crisis, it is a public policy crisis dressed in whatever garb best suits those that promote government control over our lives. That will be the constant battle of the remainder of my life. But it has nothing to do with the disease we labeled COVID-19.]

[Note 2: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]

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  1. cdor Member
    cdor
    @cdor

    Yeoman’s effort @rodin. You’ve got a couple of weeks left, but I’ll take this opportunity to tell you now how valuable your work has been and to say. “Thank You!”

    • #1
  2. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    This is the end of the regulation-to-death story of America. It’s an illness that has been coming on for a long time. The anti-second-hand smoke hysteria of ten years ago was truly the precursor to what is happening with this virus. 

    It’s terrible that people are doing this to one another. Freedom for me but not for thee. 

    The only countervailing force will be economic competition, I think. When one state lifts these stupid restrictions and prospers, people and tax dollars will flock there. 

    Perhaps the future will see people not investing in a single lifelong homestead but moving from place to place as the legal and economic environment changes. 

    • #2
  3. DonG (skeptic) Coolidge
    DonG (skeptic)
    @DonG

    I am disturbed that he Supreme Court has allowed all these lockdown policies for something as dangerous as seasonal flu.  The same Leftists are pushing lockdown policies are all in on the climate change hoax and they use the same selective science justification.

    • #3
  4. RushBabe49 Thatcher
    RushBabe49
    @RushBabe49

    MarciN (View Comment):

    This is the end of the regulation-to-death story of America. It’s an illness that has been coming on for a long time. The anti-second-hand smoke hysteria of ten years ago was truly the precursor to what is happening with this virus.

    It’s terrible that people are doing this to one another. Freedom for me but not for thee.

    The only countervailing force will be economic competition, I think. When one state lifts these stupid restrictions and prospers, people and tax dollars will flock there.

    Perhaps the future will see people not investing in a single lifelong homestead but moving from place to place as the legal and economic environment changes.

    With increasing home-schooling and remote work, that idea might gain more traction. What will happen to government schools and teachers unions when more and more parents choose to withdraw their kids and teach them at home?

    • #4
  5. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    Interesting take on the meaning of “deliver us from evil.”  I had never thought of it that way!

    (Instead, I always read it in the context of the beginning of the sentence, as a contrast to “lead us not into temptation”. So I’ve always been asking the Father to deliver me from the temptation. Some translations read “deliver us from the evil one”; Satan is the tempter, in the Garden of Eden and in the desert during the forty days of Jesus’s temptation, and the man who is successfully tempted is the actual evil-doer.)

    • #5
  6. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    This is the end of the regulation-to-death story of America. It’s an illness that has been coming on for a long time. The anti-second-hand smoke hysteria of ten years ago was truly the precursor to what is happening with this virus.

    It’s terrible that people are doing this to one another. Freedom for me but not for thee.

    The only countervailing force will be economic competition, I think. When one state lifts these stupid restrictions and prospers, people and tax dollars will flock there.

    Perhaps the future will see people not investing in a single lifelong homestead but moving from place to place as the legal and economic environment changes.

    With increasing home-schooling and remote work, that idea might gain more traction. What will happen to government schools and teachers unions when more and more parents choose to withdraw their kids and teach them at home?

    The state will make home schooling more onerous and regulated. 

    • #6
  7. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Interesting take on the meaning of “deliver us from evil.” I had never thought of it that way!

    (Instead, I always read it in the context of the beginning of the sentence, as a contrast to “lead us not into temptation”. So I’ve always been asking the Father to deliver me from the temptation. Some translations read “deliver us from the evil one”; Satan is the tempter, in the Garden of Eden and in the desert during the forty days of Jesus’s temptation, and the man who is successfully tempted is the actual evil-doer.)

    Do you not think the power hungry are his agents?

    • #7
  8. Mark Camp Member
    Mark Camp
    @MarkCamp

    Rodin (View Comment):

    Mark Camp (View Comment):

    Interesting take on the meaning of “deliver us from evil.” I had never thought of it that way!

    (Instead, I always read it in the context of the beginning of the sentence, as a contrast to “lead us not into temptation”. So I’ve always been asking the Father to deliver me from the temptation. Some translations read “deliver us from the evil one”; Satan is the tempter, in the Garden of Eden and in the desert during the forty days of Jesus’s temptation, and the man who is successfully tempted is the actual evil-doer.)

    Do you not think the power hungry are his agents?

    Yes, all sinners are his agents.  That is what I was saying.

    • #8
  9. The Scarecrow Thatcher
    The Scarecrow
    @TheScarecrow

    Jules PA (View Comment):

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    This is the end of the regulation-to-death story of America. It’s an illness that has been coming on for a long time. The anti-second-hand smoke hysteria of ten years ago was truly the precursor to what is happening with this virus.

    It’s terrible that people are doing this to one another. Freedom for me but not for thee.

    The only countervailing force will be economic competition, I think. When one state lifts these stupid restrictions and prospers, people and tax dollars will flock there.

    Perhaps the future will see people not investing in a single lifelong homestead but moving from place to place as the legal and economic environment changes.

    With increasing home-schooling and remote work, that idea might gain more traction. What will happen to government schools and teachers unions when more and more parents choose to withdraw their kids and teach them at home?

    The state will make home schooling more onerous and regulated.

    Or simply illegal.

    • #9
  10. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    The Scarecrow (View Comment):

    Jules PA (View Comment):

    RushBabe49 (View Comment):

    MarciN (View Comment):

    This is the end of the regulation-to-death story of America. It’s an illness that has been coming on for a long time. The anti-second-hand smoke hysteria of ten years ago was truly the precursor to what is happening with this virus.

    It’s terrible that people are doing this to one another. Freedom for me but not for thee.

    The only countervailing force will be economic competition, I think. When one state lifts these stupid restrictions and prospers, people and tax dollars will flock there.

    Perhaps the future will see people not investing in a single lifelong homestead but moving from place to place as the legal and economic environment changes.

    With increasing home-schooling and remote work, that idea might gain more traction. What will happen to government schools and teachers unions when more and more parents choose to withdraw their kids and teach them at home?

    The state will make home schooling more onerous and regulated.

    Or simply illegal.

    Well, that would take some time. And honestly, homeschooling is a much bigger thing than it used to be, and I think that would be pretty hard. This quarantine has pushed people over the edge. Anyone switching now is doing it instinctively out of fear or anger. It will be hard to suppress that population, when added to the current homeschoolers. 

    I’m a teacher, but I vote for school choice candidates, and I would get pretty active if homeschooling came under threat.  

    • #10
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