April 21, 2020
Punishing the Healthy
Timothy Birdnow
I had a Facebook discussion about the CV response and a thoughtful Kiwi wanted to know my reasoning. Michael asked:
So if this pandemic was real like Ebola at 80% death rate.
Would you still say social distancing is unconstitutiona
Im not looking for a fight but as a Kiwi in NZ i am interested in you stance and reasoning..
I replied:
Social distancing is pointless in regards to an asymptomatic Ebola patient.Nobody is talking about this where someone is identifiably sick. We ARE talking about where everyone is being quarantined on the off chance they are sick. You cannot suspend Constitutional protections based on "might" or "maybe". That is the difference.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled quite plainly that Constitutional protections are not suspended except under the most extraordinary circumstances and a potential illness clearly does not qualify. By the reasoning being employed now we would have quarantined the entire country when that Ebola patient wandered loose in Texas. https://
Oh, and bear in mind the Wuhan virus numbers have never been enough to justify this. Again, it is clearly unconstitutiona
The Congress could pass a law and the President could sign it, and that MIGHT make a Constitutional requirement to do certain things. However, what we have now is different state governors just dictating what they think should be happening.
A bicycle shop where it is unlikely for more than a few customers to ever gather at the same time must shut down but Walmart can sell bicycles with several hundred people milling around inside.
Our governor declared that aluminum foundries were essential, but iron, brass and steel foundries were not. Each state has different rules. Rules in any given state are ridiculous in the way that they treat areas with low population density and few or no cases of the virus the same way as high density areas with thousands of cases. But the unconstitutional part is that the governors are making up rules arbitrarily without the input of the legislatures.
And it wouldn't matter if the disease was more or less deadly. We don't live in a dictatorship.
I added:
As Benjamin Franklin put it "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". We seem to be pursuing the latter these days.
But there was a time when Americans were willing to give up their lives for liberty - for example, we lost 6800 soldiers in our Revolution with another 17000 dying of disease, hunger, and exposure. We lost 620,000 in our Civil War. We lost lives in the War of 1812, in the Mexican war, in the Spanish American war, in WWI and WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc. These were people who fought for liberty and the security of the nation. Nobody questions their sacrifice.
But now unelected officials are telling us we have to imprison ourselves based on their computer modeling. NOT on facts on the ground, mind you, but on projections they are making with insufficient evidence. And in the process we are supposed to surrender the liberties won by all of those souls who gave their lives for us to have them. It is very safe to stay in bed and hide from the world, but it's not much of a way of life.
Yes, we have to take steps to avoid a lot of unnecessary deaths, but we have to balance that out with the values and God-given rights we have won through so much blood from the past. (I would point out that a lot of wars have been fought for far less and often nobody challenges the deaths.)
Right now we are being told to surrender our freedom for a temporary security, one that may well be illusory as we have no evidence any of this is saving any lives. These protocols have never been used before.
It should be pointed out that places where they are NOT having lockdowns are doing no worse than those where the Gestapo are enforcing "shelter in place" and "social distancing".
If we are realists we have to admit we don't know enough and in light of that fact we should err on the side of liberty and prosperity. It's easy to destroy and oppress; creation and freedom are the harder thing.
BTW our government and the U.N.. agencies have lied through their teeth to us in the past. We really have a hard time accepting uncritically the word of government-paid
I had a Facebook discussion about the CV response and a thoughtful Kiwi wanted to know my reasoning. Michael asked:
So if this pandemic was real like Ebola at 80% death rate.
Would you still say social distancing is unconstitutiona
Im not looking for a fight but as a Kiwi in NZ i am interested in you stance and reasoning..
I replied:
Social distancing is pointless in regards to an asymptomatic Ebola patient.Nobody is talking about this where someone is identifiably sick. We ARE talking about where everyone is being quarantined on the off chance they are sick. You cannot suspend Constitutional protections based on "might" or "maybe". That is the difference.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled quite plainly that Constitutional protections are not suspended except under the most extraordinary circumstances and a potential illness clearly does not qualify. By the reasoning being employed now we would have quarantined the entire country when that Ebola patient wandered loose in Texas. https://
Oh, and bear in mind the Wuhan virus numbers have never been enough to justify this. Again, it is clearly unconstitutiona
l
and the Constitution may not be abrogated. SCOTUS ruled that in Ex
parte Milligan, 71 U.S. 2, that Constitutional protections cannot be
suspended except in the most limited way. At the moment two provisions
of the First Amendment are being violated - the free exercise of
religion and the right to peaceably assemble.
The authorities are justifying this on a projection, a model that leads them to believe something bad might happen in the future. It clearly does not pass constitutional muster.
BTW Oklahoma has not put any lockdown in place and they are doing just fine. If this had been limited to a week even there would be little complaint, because a very temporary emergency order is permissible. But not something that drags on like this. The numbers simply do not justify the draconian response.
And if the Constitution can be suspended based on expert projections, how do we have ANY return to normal Constitutional principles? Just declare an emergency and you wind up with permanent dictatorial powers. It's how Hitler became Fuehrer. Or how Chavez took over Venezuela.
David C. Moyer replied:The authorities are justifying this on a projection, a model that leads them to believe something bad might happen in the future. It clearly does not pass constitutional muster.
BTW Oklahoma has not put any lockdown in place and they are doing just fine. If this had been limited to a week even there would be little complaint, because a very temporary emergency order is permissible. But not something that drags on like this. The numbers simply do not justify the draconian response.
And if the Constitution can be suspended based on expert projections, how do we have ANY return to normal Constitutional principles? Just declare an emergency and you wind up with permanent dictatorial powers. It's how Hitler became Fuehrer. Or how Chavez took over Venezuela.
The Congress could pass a law and the President could sign it, and that MIGHT make a Constitutional requirement to do certain things. However, what we have now is different state governors just dictating what they think should be happening.
A bicycle shop where it is unlikely for more than a few customers to ever gather at the same time must shut down but Walmart can sell bicycles with several hundred people milling around inside.
Our governor declared that aluminum foundries were essential, but iron, brass and steel foundries were not. Each state has different rules. Rules in any given state are ridiculous in the way that they treat areas with low population density and few or no cases of the virus the same way as high density areas with thousands of cases. But the unconstitutional part is that the governors are making up rules arbitrarily without the input of the legislatures.
And it wouldn't matter if the disease was more or less deadly. We don't live in a dictatorship.
I added:
As Benjamin Franklin put it "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". We seem to be pursuing the latter these days.
But there was a time when Americans were willing to give up their lives for liberty - for example, we lost 6800 soldiers in our Revolution with another 17000 dying of disease, hunger, and exposure. We lost 620,000 in our Civil War. We lost lives in the War of 1812, in the Mexican war, in the Spanish American war, in WWI and WWII, Korea, Vietnam, etc. These were people who fought for liberty and the security of the nation. Nobody questions their sacrifice.
But now unelected officials are telling us we have to imprison ourselves based on their computer modeling. NOT on facts on the ground, mind you, but on projections they are making with insufficient evidence. And in the process we are supposed to surrender the liberties won by all of those souls who gave their lives for us to have them. It is very safe to stay in bed and hide from the world, but it's not much of a way of life.
Yes, we have to take steps to avoid a lot of unnecessary deaths, but we have to balance that out with the values and God-given rights we have won through so much blood from the past. (I would point out that a lot of wars have been fought for far less and often nobody challenges the deaths.)
Right now we are being told to surrender our freedom for a temporary security, one that may well be illusory as we have no evidence any of this is saving any lives. These protocols have never been used before.
It should be pointed out that places where they are NOT having lockdowns are doing no worse than those where the Gestapo are enforcing "shelter in place" and "social distancing".
If we are realists we have to admit we don't know enough and in light of that fact we should err on the side of liberty and prosperity. It's easy to destroy and oppress; creation and freedom are the harder thing.
BTW our government and the U.N.. agencies have lied through their teeth to us in the past. We really have a hard time accepting uncritically the word of government-paid
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
09:26 AM
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1
Ya did a good job, Timothy, me ould son! I'm proud of ye, me boy! I couldn't ha done a third as well meself. 
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at April 21, 2020 10:27 PM (qzo8l)
2
Aw shucks; thankee kindly Dana!
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at April 22, 2020 08:03 AM (3+tNT)
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