Public concern vs your rights under the Constitution. Is this really a debate we should be having? Is there ever a time when the executive can by pass our system of laws being passed by representative government and just mandate their own laws?
At the start of Covid, Trump reluctantly invoked an obscure wartime power. President Donald Trump last week invoked an obscure Korean War-era law to force General Motors to manufacture ventilators that could save patients’ lives.
“Our fight against the virus is too urgent to allow the give-and-take of the contracting process to continue to run its normal course. GM was wasting time,” Trump said as he invoked the Defense Production Act.
That was the start, which later lead to executive directives for public safety. Commands by our President and Governors on what we can and can not do with no representative votes.
Mask mandates are back in the news. based on statements made, the rumors have already started that masks mandates will once again be required of us all.
At what point do we wish to give up our freedoms? The Freedom to walk in the street and not be mandated to wear a masks seems simple enough. But what if it is a safety concern? Should every safety concern be a mandate? There are all really hard questions, in a society that prides it self on being the most Free country in the world.
An even harder question, would be, do you really have any Freedoms?
You can not drive a car at 120 MPH. There are laws forbidding that. There are laws that do not let you drink alcohol and operate your motor vehicle. You must wear a set belt. Actually, there are many laws that dictate what you can and can not do while driving.
A privilege
But, driving is a not a Freedom, it is a privilege. A privilege can be dictated by state laws. I am not a legal scholar, so I have difficulty understanding what that means. But let's say, I want to go to work naked today. Try it some time. tell the police officer that stops you, that the state can not dictate what you can and can not wear. So, you do not have the Freedom to choose what to wear. Does that mean that the government can mandate that you wear their official government issued clothes and only those clothes?
At what point are laws going to far?
Every single law takes away some of your freedoms. Without laws we would not have a society in which we could live. You can not go into a store and take items out without paying.
Should the state also be able to mandate how close to other people you are allowed to be? That while in that store, you must wear a mask? That you can not even enter that store without a vaccine card? Can the state mandate that only certain races may enter stores? Can the state mandate that those from the opposition party can not enter stores?
Constitutional Republic
In our government, we have a system of voting in those to represent us and these people get to vote on determining on our laws. We put in protections of separations of powers to further protect us from government abuse and tyranny.
Should Public Safety cancel our Constitution?
During the last pandemic, the executive branch on its own took dictatorial powers and determined law with no vote an not protections from separations of power. We accepted to give up our constitutional government for a perceived safety concern and the question is... at what point does it end?