Stop Quarantining the Constitution

by Rick Green

“We’re saying no church worshiping,” decreed the Louisville Mayor on Easter weekend. 

Pastors and pro-lifers, like my friend David Benham, arrested despite providing essential counseling services. Meanwhile, the abortionists in most states went on killing without interruption.

Churchgoers in Mississippi were ticketed $500 each for attending “drive-in” church even though everyone stayed in their own cars. Kentucky’s governor ordered the recording of license plates of any Easter Sunday Churchgoers so he could order them to a 14-Day Quarantine.

Others across the nation have been ticketed for simply going for a drive without government permission. A paddle boarder in Malibu was chased down by deputies for his non-essential joyride, while others got tickets for watching the sunset on the beach. A dad in Colorado was handcuffed in front of his six-year-old because they were playing t-ball in a park by themselves and not staying at home like the governor decreed.

Gun-stores deemed “non-essential” and closed while criminals including child rapists are released to keep them safe from the virus.

We gave our leaders the proverbial inch and they took a mile of our liberties.

Virtually every constitutionally protected liberty has been violated as part of the response to Covid19. Religion, speech, assembly, self-defense, travel, due process, and on and on. We have truly put the Constitution in quarantine.

It all started with common sense measures such as encouraging people who could work from home to do so, or the isolation of someone testing positive for the virus. Even when that expanded to “no gatherings of 250 or more” for counties where the virus was rapidly spreading, we were willing to trust the experts in an effort to protect the vulnerable among us.

In those first days of what has become the Covid Crackdown, I defended proper police powers of local government designed to stop a deadly virus such as Ebola and suggested this was their moment and we had to give them a chance to handle this rationally.

The experts told us we were facing more than two million deaths, Italy looked like a war zone, and avoiding crowds just made sense. I wrongfully believed they would not go from the temporary closure of restaurants in big cities to shutting down EVERY business in an entire state, regardless of the situation in a particular community or for a particular business. This fails every imaginable constitutional test of “narrowly tailored” and “least restrictive”.

Even as bad as it has gotten, I still believe a little public trust is essential to a republic. But just as tough times reveal our personal character, tough times also reveal the character of a Nation and the cracks in our foundation of liberty are obvious. This spun out of control precisely because of our lack of historical or constitutional perspective.

The snowball turned into an avalanche of surreal government edicts like something out of a dystopian novel. “Shelter-in-place” orders began in San Francisco on March 16, went statewide for California on March 19, followed quickly by Illinois and New Jersey, then New York, Connecticut, Louisiana, Ohio and within a week 35 states had done the same.

At that point I released another Constitutional Minute video pointing out the unprecedented, unconstitutional dangers of such overreach and contrasted these states with Texas and Florida where more common-sense, balanced approaches were being taken.

The very next day our Texas Governor caved to the pressure and joined the herd headed off the cliff. I defended Governor Abbott’s early orders closing restaurants and such for a week, but I am shocked at how far he has gone with this draconian new order.

“Disappointed” does not come close to describing what I felt when I read the Governor’s executive order.

Righteous Anger. That’s a little more accurate.

Citing a statute meant for devastating disasters that leave a community looking like a war zone and government has to stop looting and crime, Governor Abbott claimed to have the power to control the movement of every single human being in the entire state of Texas.

Let that sink in.

At that moment on March 31st, 5 people with Covid in the entire State of Texas had died. During that same 8-week period, more than 31,000 Texans had died; including more than 2,000 from pneumonia and several hundred from the flu. It is worth noting that the total number of Texas deaths during this period was only 89% of the number who usually die that same 8-week time of the year. Meaning, yes, FEWER people died than normal. (the latest data on the CDC’s website says the latest 8-week period now shows 84 deaths in Texas with Covid, out of 40,052 total Texas deaths, which is only 89% the norm; 289 died from the flu in the same period; *updated 4/15/20). These numbers are, of course, expectantly growing just as they would with any virus and even more so as officials are included ANYONE testing positive for Covid19, even if the cause of death was drowning or some other cause.

And yet, the Governor decided he needed to control the “ingress and egress” of every person within his Kingdom. Knowing this is the land where “Come & Take IT” launched a revolution, he refused to use the words “shelter-in-place” or “stay-at-home” during his press conference, but that is exactly what the executive order does.

Never in the history of America have we had such an overreach of power as we are seeing right now.

Did you catch that?

NEVER BEFORE.

Do not be sucked in by the slippery worded accounts of the 1918 Spanish Flu. Our leaders are making radical decisions based on misleading white papers and media accounts of 1918 that make it sound like these lockdowns are exactly what stopped the Spanish Flu.

Not true. Even as the virus killed 50 Million worldwide, we kept people working and never shut down the economy. (for more details, see PatriotAcademy.com/quarantine)

NEVER in our history has there been a statewide “stay-at-home order” (essentially martial law for all practical purposes) because of a virus.

Very few state and local leaders have resisted the stampede. As of this writing, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem seems to be the best, yet rare, example of balancing proper action and constitutional restraint.

City, County, and State leaders are drunk with power right now as they do their best imitation of East Berlin in the Cold War. And even as the data has caused an increasing number of experts to say this overreach was not necessary, the power grabbers are digging in to keep this power as long as they can. 

Worse than the seizing of power by the politicians and bureaucrats is the cheering, even the demanding, of the citizens as it happens. I hate to use the tired old Star Wars reference, but it’s impossible not to think of Amidala’s comment as the Emperor seizes unlimited power.

“So, this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause.”  

Former Texas Rep. Matt Rinaldi was 100% right at the beginning of all this when he said the current course was “akin to burning your house down to fight a termite infestation.”

Well fellow citizens, the house is ablaze. Are we going to put out the fire or just hide in our safe spaces and watch it burn?

And even once we get the heavy hand of government lifted, you can bet the leftists are hoping to use this crisis to transform us closer to their socialist utopia. They are openly gleeful at the chance to keep as much as possible of this shift from individualism to government control. They have stated with conviction their belief this will cause people to rely more on “the experts” and lead to universal wages, healthcare, and other Marxist ideas. 

Never mind the lessons from history proving these ideas destroy nations. Never mind the experts and the models have been significantly wrong through this whole episode (as pointed out by Yale and Stanford experts weeks ago) and the complete lockdown strategy is very likely to not save more lives than a rational and balanced approach would have (see “More herd immunity, less herd mentality” by a global health physician on the frontlines in New York). 

Regardless, the leftists will not let this crisis go to waste and both history and the facts will be ignored by their efforts.

Enough of the bad and the ugly. Let’s close with some good news.

The Texas Governor signaled that he might be willing to lift restrictions and “let” businesses and individuals get back to work and use their ingenuity to take common sense steps to take care of themselves.

Imagine that. Almost sounds American or something.

We sent a petition to Governor Abbott with hundreds of people joining us in a call for exactly this kind of common sense. You can sign the petition here and forward it to your local and state leaders.

Next we will need to prevent micro-managing oversight that will cause businesses everywhere to be strangled by ridiculously impossible operational mandates from every level of government.

In long-term good news, thousands have recently signed up for our Constitution Classes at Patriot Academy as the crisis has renewed interest in the Constitution, federalism, and the proper role of government. We now have nearly 1,000 Constitution Coaches hosting classes with their friends and family and you could do the same. We are giving our courses away for free and even training Constitution Coaches for free.

Viruses are serious and people are dying. Take it seriously, and take precautions. Work from home if you can. Protect the vulnerable, whether the elderly or the unborn (hopefully all this talk of caring about every human life will be a wake-up call in America).

But do not be part of quarantining the Constitution. Be a citizen that demands the preservation of our liberties. 

We can fight the virus without giving up our way of life. Our great-grandparents won WWI and defeated the Spanish flu at the exact same time without killing the Constitution. They would be shocked at our snowflake and safe space attitude and disappointed at how easy we have handed over our liberty with hardly an objection.

At this unprecedented time of prosperity, technological advancements, and immediate communication, we can defeat Covid19 without destroying each other and American Exceptionalism.

Rick Green is a former Texas Legislator, founder of Patriot Academy, can be heard daily across the Nation as host of WallBuilders Live, author of numerous books & courses on the Constitution, and known as America’s Constitution Coach.