Judge Andrew Napolitano recently made the following accurate claims on Fox Business Channel:
“The lockdown in Maine, just like the lockdowns everywhere else, is without legal authority.”
“It may be wise. It may be scientific — it may be the right thing to do … I cooperate with it — you cooperate with it — the overwhelming majority of Americans may cooperate with it, but it is not the law. Governors don’t write the law. Only state legislatures do.”
Many scientific experts, having reviewed the now available data, are concluding that the COVID-19 virus is not as dangerous and not as deadly as had previously been imagined. However, the lawless actions of many governors across our country are proving to be more dangerous and deadly than perhaps anyone can imagine.
As we have said before, any governor’s false imprisonment of the general populace in their homes, the arbitrary declaration of some commerce as non-essential, the misuse of police powers to enforce pretended legislation, is all without constitutional authority and demonstrates a profound disrespect for the rule of law.
Briefly described, the “rule of law” is the principle that all people, including those in authority and all institutions, are accountable to the law, which is fairly applied and enforced.
In Federalist Paper 47, Father of the Constitution James Madison made the assertion:
“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
Last week I had the opportunity to address a crowd of 1,000 or so patriots at the capital of North Carolina. I reasoned that the lawless closure order of the Governor was outrageous and filled with contempt for the rule of law.
But isn’t it also dangerous, because lawlessness breeds lawlessness?
When the chief executive of the state jettisons his duty as the protector of rights and becomes a violator of rights, he becomes a lawbreaker and he sets an example that encourages other officials to lose respect for law and order as well.
In his famous book entitled “The Law,” Frederick Bastiat noted, “No society can exist unless the laws are respected… The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable.”
When those who are charged with enforcing the law, use the law to break the law, the law becomes perverted…and disrespected.
I recently went out to play ultimate frisbee with a handful of families that had been quarantining over the past month. While keeping distance, we were still asked by a reluctant law enforcement officer to disperse.
However, another officer, clearly at odds with this ridiculous order, informed us of another park where we would not be “harassed,” and we were able to finish the day’s enjoyment.
While my story ends with a good recreational conclusion, I submit to you there is not another country where the arm of tyrannical, coercive, socialism will not harass us.
In the words of Samuel Adams:
“Courage, then, my countrymen, our contest is not only whether we ourselves shall be free, but whether there shall be left to mankind an asylum on earth for civil and religious liberty.”
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