The Coronavirus vs The Constitution - Part III

The Coronavirus Vs. The Constitution - Part III
The View from the Middle

Bill Barr, our country’s Attorney General, is beginning to question the government’s authority to deny basic civil rights to our citizens. How long can our government demand that people stay in their homes? He compared the current stay at home orders to a country-wide house arrest. How long can our government forbid businesses from operating? And then you have the queen of governmental overreach, Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer. Her stay-at-home order allows no public gatherings of any size. Really!? Michiganders are prohibited from travel between their own homes, if they are lucky enough to own more than one, and if you are already shopping in a store, you can’t buy paint, seeds or any home improvement products. Prove to me that any of those restrictions will save a single life. I heard her next move will be to force the people of Michigan to stand on their heads for four hours a day. It has nothing to do with the virus. She just wants to see if she can get anyone to do it.

The arguers for unlimited government power would say that the “Welfare” clause in the Constitution allows all of this, but I believe that we are stretching the Welfare clause beyond reasonability. What is the Welfare Clause? It is a four-word phrase in the preamble of The Constitution that declares that our founders established our Constitution in order to “promote the general welfare” of the country. It does not say that we can violate The Bill of Rights in the process.

Can and should the government educate the American people about the potential risks of this virus? Absolutely! Can they recommend frequent hand-washing, wearing masks in public and even social distancing? Sure. And, if our government had taken this less intrusive approach to the mitigation of this virus and stopped there, would the results we are experiencing today be any different? The real answer to that question is, “we don’t know”. Take a look at Sweden, who took a “laissez-faire / herd immunity” approach to the virus. Their deaths per million are not that much different than ours and are way below Italy, Spain, France and Belgium who have all been much more restrictive in their management of this disease. Could we have executed that strategy even better than Sweden and gotten the same results we have today, but saved millions of businesses and trillions in spending? We’ll never know.

A new NBC/WSJ poll says that 60% of Americans are afraid that we will open up the economy too soon. That’s not surprising given the 24-7 onslaught by the media to scare the hell out of everyone, but let’s dig into that number. First, it says that 40% of Americans are sick of this panic-living and want to get back to work. Many people in that 40% have lost their jobs, have no savings and are worried about their ability to provide the necessities (shelter and food) for their families. That 40% represents a lot of people and that number is only going to get bigger. We should also be asking what percent of that 60% are still employed. Sure, the media wants to take it slow. They’re all still working, getting paid and this is all they’re covering. Sure, Nancy Pelosi and her double-wide freezer full of ice cream wants this lockdown to continue. She is not only unaffected but is out of touch and tone-deaf at the same time. When she was told that, “The children have no milk” her reply was, “let them eat ice cream.”

Let’s get this country back to work so Nancy doesn’t have to continue suffering from self-inflicted brain freezes. When your gym opens up, go there immediately and start working out again. When restaurants open up, go out and support those small business owners who have been dying for the last two months. Brenda and I already have our reservation on May 4th when Arkansas is supposed to open up those businesses. It is time to put the Coronavirus hysteria behind us and get back to living!! Remember, no matter whose numbers you use, more than 99.9% of you will not die from this virus.