I’m pretty sure that when the Founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights, they didn’t say: “None of this counts if there is a sickness going around.” (And believe me, they knew what deadly disease was.)
In 1866 the Supreme Court ruled that emergencies do not give the government supraconstitutional powers to violate the rights of the people. In Ex parte Milligan, they wrote: “The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances.”
I don’t want anyone to get sick and die. I have elderly parents, friends and customers and an immunocompromised sibling. But I don’t think the risk of them getting sick gives government officials the power to violate the right to assemble, to assume the amount of risk we are comfortable with, to travel, to earn a living, to worship at a church, etc.
I don’t believe the government has the power to order us to destroy the businesses that so many of us have worked so hard to build, to destroy the livelihoods of us and our employees. The state is promising to bail us all out, but I fail to see how a broke state, with no sales, meals, lodging, drink and payroll taxes coming in, is going to bail out anyone. Just saying.
Michael Higgins
Eliot
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