Reality Check 101

The question in any national emergency is not whether or not any government player has the legal right to impose onerous restrictions on civil liberties or not.  The most fundamental question is and must always be whether or not they have the moral right to do so.  Even then, if they possess the moral right, the next question is whether or not the restrictions they impose are rationally justified.

Every action of government at any level is unavoidably a moral action.  Our forefathers recognized that principle when they declared their right of independence from their king by appealing publicly to the laws of “nature and nature’s God”.  They went even further by declaring that all of us are “endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”.  Those are ethical statements unabashedly derived from a moral universe and a moral Creator – not a political universe or Creator. 

President Trump famously said that he did not want the “cure to be worse than the disease”.  Without a doubt, the president likely had the impact of the economy and society in mind.  But he was right on ethical grounds.  When a government takes action against wide swaths of her citizens which forces them into threatening conditions through loss of their income, their businesses, their support systems, or their family relationships, those actions are absolutely and fundamentally moral effects.  They therefore cross the line into moral offence. 

The effort has, more than anything, been a battle against a physical virus for the sake of public wellbeing.  But again, it was an ethical choice and one of directed cause and effect to avoid death and suffering.  But death and suffering is now growing, not as a result of the virus, but as a result of choices by “experts” advising the people’s overseers.  It is not difficult to follow stories of terribly exploding cases of domestic abuse, child abuse, depression, and suicide.  Now the moral ramifications are becoming alarming.

The upshot of all this is that there is no longer a moral justification for our government-imposed suffering.

The morality of any action is of course the most consequential part, but as free people there is another principle.  There is no better sign of that principle being endangered than that of the Attorney General William Barr’s publicly-released memorandum recently sent to all United States attorneys and his assistant attorney general for civil rights.  It was titled “Balancing Public Safety with the Preservation of Civil Rights”.  The effect of the memo was as a warning order to his 94 U.S. attorneys to monitor state and local policies and intervene if necessary (“Constitution Isn’t Suspended for COVID-19, Attorney General Barr Warns Public Officials”).

Why the top-level concern?  In Michigan, a person could, at the height of Governor Whitmer’s edicts, go into a Menards store (all protected-up of course), walk down an isle with two end-caps, one with candy and the other with garden seeds.  It was “legal” for that person to buy the candy but if they tried to get the seeds, they were behaving outside of the “law” (personal experience).  A Michigander could be on a lake in his boat only by himself – with no motor.  In Brighton, Colorado, police handcuffed a father in front of his family for playing ball with his daughter in an empty park (“Coronavirus Authoritarianism is Getting Out of Hand”).  Three men were arrested and faced 90 days in jail for crossing into Rhode Island from Massachusetts to play golf.  Louisville, Kentucky mayor Greg Fischer tried to ban drive-in church services.  In many states, Michigan included, it is “legal” to buy cigarettes, booze, and Marijuana or abort living human beings, but not have a hip replacement.

Social media giants are no better.  You Tube removed and censored posts from Dr. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi, two California doctors who dared to challenge the assumptions of our confinement

( https://www.aier.org/article/open-up-society-now-say-dr-dan-erickson-and-dr-artin-massihi/ ).  Another emanant researcher, Dr. Judy Mikovits, is also calling foul and has personal experience with Dr. Fauci.  So far, she has not been censored (https://youtu.be/qq2uuHfmq8k ).

There is a pattern here.  Scared leaders make irresponsible sometimes irrational decisions.  The idea that any government entity is justified in exercising its prerogatives when and if it chooses simply because it can, is not the real issue.  The real issue is whether or not it should.  That is the crux of any justification for its actions. 

The Bill of Rights does not have a “except when” clause.  The ability to preserve a free nation rests in large part on a good faith understanding and trust between citizens and government.  Violations of that public trust can do nothing but erode societal cohesion and make bad situations worse.