Rise Up

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment XIV

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

The operative phrase here being “nor prohibited by it to the states”. The “police powers” claimed by the Governors of the various states which are the current causes of complaint during this "epidemic”, cannot, and should not, be viewed as having any power to abrogate our fundamental rights, as that is beyond any reasonable dispute “prohibited by it to the states”.

If “Congress shall make no law…”, and that injunction is applicable to the states via the 14^th Amendment, by what authority do the states presume to grant “emergency powers” through legislation, or governors by executive order, that are clearly, by accident or intent, an encroachment on our rights? If “Congress shall make no law” in any exigency it must surely be beyond the purview of any state government, or state Governor, to do so.

Rights are fundamental. They are “a priori” the rights of all people, everywhere, at all times and places and under every circumstance. We have for the majority of our history been blessed with a government that at least payed lip service to that fact and has gone farther than most in making it a reality. Unfortunately, it seems that those “times they are a changing”. What else are the protestors in Michigan, or the surfers on Huntington Beach doing but "petitioning  the government for a redress of their grievances"? Their grievances are well founded, and no government has any authority to silence them. 

We have been cowed into submission by exaggerated prognostications, based on egregiously inaccurate modeling, that has accomplished nothing but to render us malleable to the whims of those soi disant “experts” who have no other goal than our subservience to their “models”.

Sheep, once herded, fear to break away from the flock. Not for fear of predators, or of  independence, but for fear of the sheep dogs. Therein lies the danger. 

That we should grant such power to the "servants of the people" turns our Republic into feudal serfdom. 

To coin a phrase: "Rise Up"