I’ve been wearing a mask for almost three weeks.
My wife sewed it. She has sewed a lot of them. For family, for friends, for strangers she doesn’t know.
Because wearing a mask is a perfectly reasonable choice, but a completely tyrannical order.
Which is what we’ve come to expect. They say we’re fighting the coronavirus, but the biggest casualty has been freedom. It is a world turned upside down, in which in the name of public health we have dumped the Constitution, destroyed the economy and empowered any number of aspiring dictators.
And now Andy Cuomo has ordered us to wear masks.
For the same reason a dog licks its balls.
Because he can.
Because this plague has been played by the politicians as an attack on liberty. County executives and governors have taken it upon themselves to impose impromptu totalitarian states on what used to be called the land of the free.
And no, “totalitarian” is not an exaggeration.
Civil liberties have been suspended. Neither labor nor capital are free. The movements of people are being restricted and penalized. The courts have been closed, the legislatures have been disbanded, the people as individuals and collectively are being impoverished.
All by executive order. By the waving of a tyrant’s pen.
The First Amendment has been smashed and despoiled. The free exercise of religion, inviolate in the eyes of the Constitution, has been denied. It literally may be two years before Americans are allowed to gather to worship. The right of peaceful assembly is likewise in abeyance, with various ad hoc dictators directing cooperative kapos to telephone the police if they see gatherings or anything suspicious. Presumably, the best of them will be issued brown shirts.
In these forbidden assemblies are things as personal, elemental and sacred as weddings, funerals, birthday parties and family gatherings.
We are even denied the right to be with our loved ones as they die or suffer, locked up in the charnel houses that nursing homes and hospitals have become.
And the right of the people to petition the government for a redress of grievances – namely, to ask for judicial or administrative review of these onerous oppressions – is blocked by the closing of government and judicial offices. Only essential court actions can be brought, and challenges to the power of the potentate are not considered essential.
Further, the very notion of free labor and the possession of property go out the window when Americans are told they may not work to support their families, or practice their trades, vocations and professions. And those who have established businesses must shutter those businesses or be sanctioned by the government. The Fifth Amendment says that the government may not “take” one’s property or prosperity without compensation, and yet by denying livelihoods and closing businesses, that is exactly what it is doing.
But the assault on liberty is not just through offense to the amendments to the Constitution, it is also in a repudiation of the very structure of American government contained in the body of the Constitution. These executive orders are not subject to legislative review at any level of government – thereby silencing the voice of the people’s branch of government and crippling the tyrant-hobbling balance of powers which is the surest protector of American liberty.
And in state after state the legislature is sent home and forbidden to meet in conventional fashion because of executive dictate.
The greatest wrong, however, is committed against the Declaration of Independence, whose definition of the purpose and power of government bears no resemblance to the decrees of the leaders of the COVID coup. The Declaration says that humans are born with God-given rights, and that governments are created to safeguard those rights.
Government exists to protect liberty, not flatten curves.
Certainly, public health is a function of modern government. But there is a hierarchy of government power and purpose, and nothing trumps freedom. The supreme law of the land is always the supreme law of the land, no matter what the governor or mayor or county executive says. You cannot suppress a greater good to potentially achieve a lesser good. And the way America is wired, the way our founding documents say we are to be, freedom is always the greatest good.
There’s a reason the New Hampshire license plates say Live Free or Die.
The issue isn’t even the experts’ preposterous projections and their stunning record of being wrong, or the horrific failure to protect life and health demonstrated in the New York City area, or the increasing sense that social distancing and flattening the curve is a cure as bad as the disease.
The issue is this is America.
And we are a free country.
Not just when it’s convenient, not just when our masters say it’s ok, not just when the experts approve.
But always.
I may choose to wear a mask, Mr. Governor, and you may issue an advisory suggesting that I do so. But you cannot order me to wear one. You are not my master or my superior. You are my fellow citizen, and we are a nation, a Republic, of laws. The highest of those is the Constitution.
And you swore to follow the Constitution.
And while you have chosen to abandon your oath, others of us have not.
And we, and millions of our fellow Americans, have had just about enough.
Which reminds me of the saying: If you beat the dog, he just might bite.
That’s something for the petty tyrants to remember.
Because the dog’s growling pretty good right now.