Government power to impose quarantine has a long history. The term comes from Italian “cuaranti giorni” or forty days – the length of time the Republic of Venice required ships coming from the Far East to stay at anchor when there were any sailors on board who were or who could be ill, before coming in to dock. This practice was instituted after the days of the Black Death plague – that gee, also originally came from China, as do so many epidemic illnesses – in the 1300’s and into the 1400’s.
One of the first duties of government is to protect the lives of the citizens and inhabitants under their authority; therefore, the authority to declare quarantine does belong to civil governance. Under our Constitutional, federal, system of dual sovereignty, the authority to restrict the movement of citizens belongs to the states and the towns, not the federal government. However, the states ceded all authority and control over those seeking to enter the country to the federal government (Article 1, Section 8), so the federal government has the authority to close the borders to entry, and restrict travel out to other countries. President Trump is acting properly in dealing with international travel and entry into the country, while leaving the governors and mayors in charge of state and local restrictions.
But this all begs several questions: what ARE the powers of quarantine, to whom are those powers directed, and for what purpose? The powers of quarantine are to separate those who are ill (or who may be ill but are not yet visibly ill) from those who are not infected, for the purpose of stopping the spread of contagion. Traditionally, it is only those who are SICK – and those who have been in contact with the sick – who are isolated. The rest of the people are NOT restricted in their movements, unless and until they show symptoms. This ccp-virus episode is different because of the reported long lag time between infection and open display of symptoms, the possibility of being infectious before any visible symptoms, and the high level of danger to the elderly and to those with other health conditions including various forms of immuno-compromise.
Keep in mind when this all started there was very little real information with which to work; we had terrifying videos of people keeling over on the streets of Wuhan, and smuggled videos of piled body bags and emergency hospitals and people being welded in to their apartments to die. At that time, with what was known then, President Trump’s actions to shut down air travel from China, and then from Europe, along with testing (very rudimentary at the time), were appropriate and Constitutional actions to protect the lives of Americans. Federal guidelines have been recommendations rather than mandates, as is appropriate in a federal system.
It is the governors and mayors, who have gone far overboard in restricting the actions of healthy individuals. Again, when non-essential shut-downs were first announced, the public purpose was to “flatten the curve” to ensure that our hospital systems were not overwhelmed by sick people pouring in, and people dying simply because we were out of equipment. This makes sense, and is therefore a legitimate operation of local power to call for quarantine. As we have learned more, though, the proper response – which is to slowly LIFT restrictions, starting with those least likely to be harmed – has, to an appalling extent, not been followed.
Instead, the dictator and tyrant wannabees in a number of state capitals and cities and towns have put increasingly Draconian restrictions in place; refuse to listen to medical science, reason, or ANY facet of public interest. Instead, they are treating the healthy, law-abiding citizens of their states as being under house arrest! THIS is the area that deserves citizen vigilance, legal action, and public protest. (For public protest, however, there also needs to be a careful watch put out for agents provocateurs, whose purpose is to frame normal people as dangerous thugs.)
Some of the bizarre items and dictatorial actions are:
All these are strong indications of political machinations seeking political goals and therefore are not only illegal, but also illicit, unAmerican, and unConstitutional. The leftists (democrats AND republicans) have over-played their hands and are exposing themselves for the dictators they are, and people are waking up. One example is the Michigan governor losing the support of the democrats in the MI state house, the legis-vermin there are acting to rescind her emergency powers, and there are public petitions to hold a recall election to remove her from office.
Attorney General Barr’s threatened lawsuits against governors and mayors are an appropriate plan of action. The Constitution guarantees every state a republic form of government – that means that dictators are NOT permitted. But we, the people, also need to let these tyrants know that they have over-stepped and that this will NOT be permitted. Burn up the phone lines, the fax lines, the email in-boxes with protests; the government works for US and WE are sovereign. They are not our masters. Protest in person and in groups – being aware, again, of the infiltrators who want to provide an excuse to taint our reasonable demands as extreme and violent.
One of the first duties of government is to protect the lives of the citizens and inhabitants under their authority; therefore, the authority to declare quarantine does belong to civil governance. Under our Constitutional, federal, system of dual sovereignty, the authority to restrict the movement of citizens belongs to the states and the towns, not the federal government. However, the states ceded all authority and control over those seeking to enter the country to the federal government (Article 1, Section 8), so the federal government has the authority to close the borders to entry, and restrict travel out to other countries. President Trump is acting properly in dealing with international travel and entry into the country, while leaving the governors and mayors in charge of state and local restrictions.
But this all begs several questions: what ARE the powers of quarantine, to whom are those powers directed, and for what purpose? The powers of quarantine are to separate those who are ill (or who may be ill but are not yet visibly ill) from those who are not infected, for the purpose of stopping the spread of contagion. Traditionally, it is only those who are SICK – and those who have been in contact with the sick – who are isolated. The rest of the people are NOT restricted in their movements, unless and until they show symptoms. This ccp-virus episode is different because of the reported long lag time between infection and open display of symptoms, the possibility of being infectious before any visible symptoms, and the high level of danger to the elderly and to those with other health conditions including various forms of immuno-compromise.
Keep in mind when this all started there was very little real information with which to work; we had terrifying videos of people keeling over on the streets of Wuhan, and smuggled videos of piled body bags and emergency hospitals and people being welded in to their apartments to die. At that time, with what was known then, President Trump’s actions to shut down air travel from China, and then from Europe, along with testing (very rudimentary at the time), were appropriate and Constitutional actions to protect the lives of Americans. Federal guidelines have been recommendations rather than mandates, as is appropriate in a federal system.
It is the governors and mayors, who have gone far overboard in restricting the actions of healthy individuals. Again, when non-essential shut-downs were first announced, the public purpose was to “flatten the curve” to ensure that our hospital systems were not overwhelmed by sick people pouring in, and people dying simply because we were out of equipment. This makes sense, and is therefore a legitimate operation of local power to call for quarantine. As we have learned more, though, the proper response – which is to slowly LIFT restrictions, starting with those least likely to be harmed – has, to an appalling extent, not been followed.
Instead, the dictator and tyrant wannabees in a number of state capitals and cities and towns have put increasingly Draconian restrictions in place; refuse to listen to medical science, reason, or ANY facet of public interest. Instead, they are treating the healthy, law-abiding citizens of their states as being under house arrest! THIS is the area that deserves citizen vigilance, legal action, and public protest. (For public protest, however, there also needs to be a careful watch put out for agents provocateurs, whose purpose is to frame normal people as dangerous thugs.)
Some of the bizarre items and dictatorial actions are:
- Faulty virus tests tainted with the actual virus
- False reporting of every death as being due to ccp-virus
- Anti-HCQ propaganda; strident, gleeful, almost hysterical anti-drug propaganda
- Threats against doctors who prescribe HCQ
- Drone surveillance – with drones made in China!
- Distancing squares on store floors and restrictions on the number of people allowed into even huge-footprint stores
- Disallowance of travel to one’s own in-state vacation home, while allowing out-of-state persons to come in to their vacation homes
- Restrictions against motorboats but not against canoes
- Filling skate parks with sand
- Forbidding purchase of seeds, or paint
- Release of violent prisoners into the public; endangering the lives of the law-abiding
- Cessation of enforcement of criminal law
- Arresting people for the non-crime of non-distancing with live-in family members
- Calls for mail-in voting (a huge source of vote fraud)
- Calls for mandatory vaccines,
- Calls for mandatory official papers, or armbands, proving health status
- Proposed tracking of ALL persons by cell phone location for ccp-virus “warnings”
- Social media pulling down calls for protests (but not calls for violent antifa-style actions)
All these are strong indications of political machinations seeking political goals and therefore are not only illegal, but also illicit, unAmerican, and unConstitutional. The leftists (democrats AND republicans) have over-played their hands and are exposing themselves for the dictators they are, and people are waking up. One example is the Michigan governor losing the support of the democrats in the MI state house, the legis-vermin there are acting to rescind her emergency powers, and there are public petitions to hold a recall election to remove her from office.
Attorney General Barr’s threatened lawsuits against governors and mayors are an appropriate plan of action. The Constitution guarantees every state a republic form of government – that means that dictators are NOT permitted. But we, the people, also need to let these tyrants know that they have over-stepped and that this will NOT be permitted. Burn up the phone lines, the fax lines, the email in-boxes with protests; the government works for US and WE are sovereign. They are not our masters. Protest in person and in groups – being aware, again, of the infiltrators who want to provide an excuse to taint our reasonable demands as extreme and violent.
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