Roseville, CA…Quarantine is the forced confinement of a person who has contracted or been exposed to an infectious disease. Although it is a long-standing police power of governments, it is seldom used because seldom needed – sick people generally stay home on their own. When it must be used, it is subject to due process: the right to contest the order in court, to present evidence that the order is invalid, and to have it vacated.
What is happening today is radically different and profoundly un-American: the indefinite and indiscriminate home detention without due process of perfectly healthy people on the pretext that they might catch a contagious disease. While it is true that some people may be infectious without knowing it, that’s no different than a wide variety of other contagious diseases that have been with us for generations and that are far more lethal than Covid-19.
Although some local jurisdictions prohibited large public gatherings during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, never before has any American government attempted to confine an entire population in its homes, order the mass shuttering of businesses, and deliberately plunge tens of millions of Americans into unemployment, poverty and despair.
This new power, asserted in increasingly arbitrary and aggressive manners by public servants-turned-masters, is antithetical to our First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and our Fifth Amendment right to not be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The courts recognize some restrictions of these rights, but only by “the least restrictive means,” not arbitrary and unreasonable edicts.
In California, this abusive power has been used to deny citizens the right to protest the abuse itself. In North Carolina, the Raleigh Police Department declared, “Protesting is a non-essential activity.” In Pennsylvania, police fined a woman $200 for taking a solitary drive in her own car. A San Diego woman is threatened with a $1,000 fine and jail-time for promoting a protest on Facebook. Ironically, while law-abiding citizens are arrested for exercising rights guaranteed under their Bill of Rights, authorities are releasing thousands of criminals from prisons and in California, forbidding sheriffs from holding a wide class of criminal suspects, including burglars.
The greatest threat of this newly asserted power is to fundamentally alter the relationship between Americans and their government. It is the age-old question that Cecil B. DeMille framed in his introduction to “The Ten Commandments,” “Are men the property of the state, or are they free souls under God?”
Every time we step outside our homes, the risks we face multiply. A free society assumes that its citizens are competent to assess those risks, balance them against the avoidance costs, and to manage their decisions in a generally responsible way. It’s called common sense, and is a necessary prerequisite for self-government and liberty.
When a risk presents itself, people naturally change their behavior. If they believe the risk of leaving their houses is too great, they are free to stay at home. If they believe venturing beyond their front doors is a manageable risk, they are free to venture into the world, taking those precautions that to them seem most prudent. In an epidemic, their assessments of risk might convince them to avoid crowded theaters or restaurants, wash their hands more frequently, avoid handshakes, wear masks or become hermits. These acts don’t require force and don’t make demands on others. They are a matter of individual judgment and choice.
The choice of an octogenarian with emphysema in New York City might be very different from a healthy college student in Iowa. Only a fool would claim the omniscience to make an informed judgment for every person in every circumstance in every community. Sadly, the crisis has revealed that fools abound in public office and that a fool with power can quickly become a petty tyrant.
In this pandemic, many elected officials have abandoned the practices of a free society and crossed some very bright lines that separate free Americans from those unfortunate to live under authoritarian regimes. Communist China pioneered the practices now inflicted on our own citizens. That should scream a warning to us all.
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Quarantine and a Free Society By Congressman Tom McClintock added by admin on
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So how do we get around this tyrany. I am unable to go to church while abortions are being done on a daily basis. I have been unable to find flour or toilet paper in the stores without making multiple trips tot he store over a 7 week period and my income is Social Security. Its even illegal to visit our 96 year old mother because we can’t be the cause of her getting sick at her age. She is being held hostage in an assisted living facility with crappy food being delivered t o her door by staff of the facility. We are unable to speak to her on the telephone because she can’t hear or understand what we are saying. Our Farm-stay business where folks come to the 40 acre farm and breathe fresh air and sunshine is prohibited which makes it so we cannot even purchase hay for our cows and feed for our chickens. We have zero employees so we do not qualify for assistance. For the bank to allow us a 90 day reprieve on our house payment means that the bank wants the money in full at the end of 90 days. If I don’t have it now how would I have it then? IF we are lucky enough to find toilet paper online it is so expensive we cannot afford to purchase it. Its either purchase the toilet paper ($178.00 for 12 rolls) or find a corn cob. There are no Sears catalogs anymore even if you could use it in modern toilets. Again…. How do we survive. We are seniors on a fixed income.
Also I cannot understand why there is a shortage of flour. I am sure that everybody didn’t suddenly learn how to make biscuits. The stores are telling me that flour is only shipped in small quantities or not at all. WHY. It feels like government control and power.
Johnny McDaniel didn’t realize he was in a death cult when he died of Covid-19 on April 15th. Like Jim Jones’ followers didn’t believe suicide could become a requirement of church membership, McDaniel died a true believer, spewing the lies of his cult on Facebook.
Tom McClintock, Fox News, and other fake conservative loudmouths won’t confess their part in Johnny’s unintentional suicide. But there’s a straight line between reckless lies made to seem credible because they emanate from a Congressman and a cable “news” channel, and Americans getting needlessly infected.
Nowhere in McClintock’s unhinged rant, including a comparison of California to communist China, was one word about how we are all in this together. Not one word cautioning constituents to protect themselves or each other. Plenty of words inciting people to believe their state and local governments are evil.
Of all the specious nonsense McClintock claimed, most ridiculous is that government, obeying the wishes of the 60% of us who want to be more careful about re-opening the economy than Michigan’s AR-15 sporting fake patriots prefer, is behaving like a despotic tyranny. Get this: government with the power to conscript unwilling young men to fight and die in wars they believe are un-American (Vietnam,) or dishonest and insane (Iraq) is in no way a tyranny, but one that mandates we stay home for a few weeks is. You can’t make up something that obviously ridiculous.
McClintock has nothing to say about a White House that, to this day, suggests guidelines for states to follow, while the President, looking to maintain the votes of his cult, cheers protesting those very same guidelines implemented at the state level. Cultists see no hypocrisy or insanity in that; because Dear Leader is always the embodiment of human perfection: who many Evangelical Christians assert, as they did Hitler, is a messenger of God.
Even if you believe McClintock’s claim we, in effect, all have the constitutional right to commit suicide and recklessly risk killing our friends, family, and neighbors, there remains the undeniable effect his childish, retarded jihad will have on the counties in his district. Today, he’s advocating lawsuits against counties doing their best to maximize the number of us who survive a pandemic that’s already claimed the lives of nearly 80,000 Americans. Your tax dollars are being spent on this death cult foolishness.