{"id":99834,"date":"2020-04-28T23:48:14","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T06:48:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=99834"},"modified":"2020-04-28T23:48:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-29T06:48:14","slug":"quarantine-and-a-free-society-by-congressman-tom-mcclintock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=99834","title":{"rendered":"Quarantine and a Free Society By Congressman Tom McClintock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roseville, CA…Quarantine<\/a>\u00a0is the forced confinement of a person who has contracted or been exposed to an infectious disease.\u00a0 Although it is a long-standing police power of governments, it is seldom used because seldom needed \u2013 sick people generally stay home on their own.\u00a0 When it must be used, it is subject to\u00a0due process<\/a>: the right to contest the order in court, to present evidence that the order is invalid, and to have it vacated.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 While it is true that some people may be infectious without knowing it, that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Although some local jurisdictions prohibited large public gatherings during the\u00a0Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

This new power, asserted in increasingly arbitrary and aggressive manners by public servants-turned-masters, is antithetical to our\u00a0First Amendment<\/a>\u00a0right to peaceably assemble and our\u00a0Fifth Amendment<\/a>\u00a0right to not be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.\u00a0 The courts recognize some restrictions of these rights, but only by \u201cthe least restrictive means<\/a>,\u201d not arbitrary and unreasonable edicts.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0California<\/a>, this abusive power has been used to deny citizens the right to protest the abuse itself.\u00a0\u00a0 In\u00a0North Carolina<\/a>, the Raleigh Police Department declared, \u201cProtesting is a non-essential activity.\u201d\u00a0 In\u00a0Pennsylvania<\/a>, police fined a woman $200 for taking a solitary drive in her own car.\u00a0 A\u00a0San Diego<\/a>\u00a0woman is threatened with a $1,000 fine and jail-time for promoting a protest on Facebook.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ironically, while law-abiding citizens are arrested for exercising rights guaranteed under their Bill of Rights, authorities are releasing\u00a0thousands of criminals<\/a>\u00a0from prisons and in\u00a0California<\/a>, forbidding sheriffs from holding a wide class of criminal suspects, including burglars.<\/p>\n

The greatest threat of this newly asserted power is to fundamentally alter the relationship between Americans and their government.\u00a0 It is the age-old question that\u00a0Cecil B. DeMille<\/a>\u00a0framed in his introduction to \u201cThe Ten Commandments,\u201d \u201cAre men the property of the state, or are they free souls under God?\u201d<\/p>\n

Every time we step outside our homes, the risks we face multiply.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It\u2019s called common sense, and is a necessary prerequisite for self-government and liberty.<\/p>\n

When a risk presents itself, people naturally change their behavior.\u00a0 If they believe the risk of leaving their houses is too great, they are free to stay at home.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 These acts don\u2019t require force and don\u2019t make demands on others.\u00a0 They are a matter of individual judgment and choice.<\/p>\n

The choice of an octogenarian with emphysema in New York City might be very different from a healthy college student in Iowa.\u00a0 Only a fool would claim the omniscience to make an informed judgment for every person in every circumstance in every community.\u00a0 Sadly, the crisis has revealed that fools abound in public office and that a fool with power can quickly become a petty tyrant.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Communist China pioneered the practices now inflicted on our own citizens.\u00a0 That should scream a warning to us all.<\/p>\n

# #<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roseville, CA…Quarantine\u00a0is the forced confinement of a person who has contracted or been exposed to an infectious disease.\u00a0 Although it is a long-standing police power of governments, it is seldom used because seldom needed \u2013 sick people generally stay home on their own.\u00a0 When it must be used, it is subject to\u00a0due process: the right […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42839,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Tom_McClintock_Official_Portrait.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=99834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=99834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=99834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=99834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}