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“Bald Eagle” by Pen Waggener is licensed under (Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))
How long are we going to have to suspend our rights? We need an end date.
In times of crisis, fundamental changes to the American rule of law and the way of life tend to occur. Drastic shifts in the status quo have taken place at moments in American history when a disastrous event is unfolding. Such instances include the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As the Coronavirus Disease (CoVid-19) pandemic continues to bring illness and death to the United States of America, leaving mass hysteria and economic destruction in its wake, unprecedented actions have been taken to curb the spread of the virus. In response to the contagion, large gatherings of people have been banned across the United States. Schools, restaurants, gyms, theaters, bars, child care facilities, libraries, museums, churches, and more have been closed indefinitely. American citizens have been given the order to maintain “social distancing,” which essentially means limiting physical contact with others, keeping a significant degree of physical separation from people, and avoiding large gatherings in public spaces. Further behavioral modifications such as frequent hand washing, and reducing hand-face contact have been widely disseminated and encouraged by the government. Everyday life as Americans know it has come to a screeching halt.
The states possess what is called police power, which is embedded in the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That power entails they have the ability to impose laws that ensure the health, safety, and morality of their residents and preserve the common good. As such, the states can reasonably subvert individual liberty whenever an occasion arises in which it is necessary to protect the general public from harm. But at the same time, they have to ensure that the measures do not infringe upon any of the individual rights protected by the United States Constitution, or in their own state constitutions. Most of all, the states must make sure that their use of power is not unduly arbitrary or oppressive. The policy measures that have been implemented thus far have no precedent in American history; this is completely new territory. In commanding the quarantine of millions of citizens in the name of public health, the states are walking a fine line between ensuring safety and enforcing tyranny. A slight tremor in the delicate balance of matters now could result in unjust, despotic, and unconstitutional rule by lawmakers and politicians in the United States.
So while the states do have option of using their police power in the case of an emergency, there has never been an occasion to justify such a liberal use of it, and definitely not by multiple states at the same time. In fact, the enforcement of the full police power in states like California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Illinois eerily resemble martial law. There have been instances of martial law on the state and city level before, such as in Maryland when President Lincoln revoked the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, in New Orleans after the Battle of New Orleans in 1812, in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, and in Cambridge after the 1963 race riots. But American citizens have never before been ordered on a national or multi-state level to remain at home, even during wartime. Many state governments are warning of arrests or fines if citizens fail to abide by the dictates of quarantine. This situation has thus far proven to be a thoroughly unfamiliar moment in the American story.
What makes these recent developments all the more shocking is that the United States has no history of tyrannical government. Many Americans tend to banter nonchalantly about current or historical ruthless regimes in foreign countries. But never in a million years did the average American consider a scenario in which the iron fist of the state would be slammed on their heads. But that moment has come sooner than most Americans could have ever imagined. The rapid curtailment of freedom is happening all over the world, but most of the world is accustomed to arbitrary state power. America is one of the very few places on Earth that has been a safe haven for individual liberty. It is truly the last bastion for what is called freedom. Countries like China, Iran, South Korea, and even Western European nations like France, Italy, and Spain all have histories of centralized power in the form of absolute monarchy or tyrannical dictatorship. The heavy-handed pandemic prophylaxis procedures that those countries have been employing, ostensibly to fight the coronavirus, are not totally alien concepts for them.
“Mao” by Clemson is licensed under (Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0))
China has been shaped by thousands of years of absolute monarchy dating back to the Ancient Chinese Empire. On top of that, China has a bloody history of oppressive Communism starting with Mao Zedong and continuing under the single-party dictatorship of Xi Jinping. In the 21st Century China has evolved even further from its 20th century totalitarian roots. Now, China has become an Orwellian technocratic tyranny ruled by the elites of the Communist Party. Millions of well-placed cameras equipped with facial recognition technology closely monitor and collect data on everyone in China. At any given time, people can be located, identified, and detained if need be. The Chinese government strictly censors what people can see and read on the Internet, and online activities are closely tracked by artificial intelligence.
If all of those intrusions into the lives of private citizens appears to be creepy and awful, unfortunately, it gets even worse. All citizens in China receive a “social credit score,” which is somewhat similar to the credit card score that Westerners are familiar with. But instead of being associated with loans and credit card usage, the “social credit score” that the Chinese use to rate their citizens has more to do with how people behave on a day-to-day basis. That would include evaluating how people perform at work, judging what people post on social media, scrutinizing the health choices people make such as going to the gym, and monitoring how selfless people by whether or not they donate to charity. As long as citizens act in ways that are formally “approved” by the Chinese government, then their social credit score will rise. With a good social credit score, citizens have greater access to nice housing and lucrative job opportunities. If citizens make choices that the state “disapproves” of, such as criticizing the Communist Party or smoking cigarettes in non-smoking areas, then their social credit score will fall. If it falls below a certain threshold, then they can be barred from using public transportation, from shopping at certain places, or even from leaving the country. Long story short, freedom did not exist in China before CoVid-19, it does not exist now as the pandemic continues, and it will not exist when this situation is over.
Before continuing on, here is a very brief political summary of some other nations that received significant media attention for their total lockdowns. South Korea has been defined by absolute monarchs and military dictatorships throughout its history. Liberal democracy is a very recent phenomenon in the country. As recently as the 1970s and the 1980s, South Korea was ruled by a succession of military dictators by the name of Park Chung-hee and Chun-Doo Hwan. Iran has been ruled by absolutist governments ever since it was known as the Persian Empire. Freedom and true democracy are foreign concepts in the country. Constitutional monarchy briefly arose in the 20th century, and some liberalization occurred during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah in the middle of the 20th century. But since 1979, Iran has been a theocratic Islamic republic with very limited individual freedom.
Even though Spain is nominally free, the centralized power of the state is woven into its political structure. Absolute monarchy existed there for hundreds of years in the form of Kings with Divine Right, and in more recent times, the country endured the heavy boot of military dictatorship from the mid 1920s up until Francisco Franco’s death in 1975. With a history that is rather analogous to that of Spain, France has a long tradition of absolute monarchy and tyrannical rulers. While France did manage to establish a stable liberal democracy earlier than Spain did, the political philosophy of state sovereignty (power emanating from the state apparatus) rather than popular sovereignty (power emanating from the people) is roughly the same in both countries. France has had a preponderance of Communists and socialists in their government throughout the 20th Century. Figures such as Guy Mollet and Jacques Chirac continued the French tradition of massive state authority. Last but not least, Italy has descended from an extensive history of absolutism and despotism dating back to Ancient Rome, the Papal States, and Mussolini’s Fascist Dictatorship from 1922-1943. And although Italy has since become a parliamentary democracy, the Italian government is notorious for its organized crime, rampant corruption, and its inefficient but powerful bureaucracy, all of which leaves minimal power in the hands of the general population.
In stark contrast to all of the aforementioned countries, the United States descended from the tradition of Great Britain’s constitutional monarchy, in which the King was required to share power with his constituents. The Kingdom of England wrestled with the concept of Divine Right as early as the 13th century in the Magna Carta, and then established a working Parliament by the 17th century. When America declared its independence in 1776, the nation was already deeply imbued with the spirit of Great Britain’s political tradition and the great men who wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were deeply influenced by it. Steeped in the works of Aristotle, Cicero, Montesquieu, and Locke, all of whom warned against the pitfalls of centralized government, the Founding Fathers established a limited government in the United States backed by a written constitution. They did so because they were acutely aware of the barbaric and bloody history of mankind. The Founding Fathers were humbled by the fallen nature of man, and they understood how quickly tyrannical government can emerge if state power is not properly tamed and dispersed. Consequently, they created a government capable of providing protection for its citizens’ fundamental God-given rights but only if its power is derived from the consent of the governed. The United States is the only country in the world that has ever been founded on the concept of limited government, which makes it a unique and exceptional nation. Permeating America’s ethos down to the very core is an intrinsic distrust of centralized authority and the horrors that it can cause.
Constitution of the United States, page 1 via National Archives and Records Administration / Public domain
The fact that the United States was carefully constructed as a bulwark against tyranny and arbitrary state power makes the past few days all the more astonishing, and actually quite terrifying. America has been turned on its head in the blink of an eye. The abrupt abrogation of civil liberties, particularly the First Amendment right to freedom of assembly since public gatherings are banned, and the ability to freely worship since churches have been closed is thoroughly disconcerting. For the first time in America’s storied history, millions of its citizens will be forced to experience what it feels like to live in a totalitarian, all-powerful state. For some time now, there has been a foreboding sense in America, and in much of the Western world, of an Orwellian Big Brother quietly and menacingly observing society. This feeling of creeping dread became even more pronounced after the 9/11 attacks and the ubiquity of the Internet, smartphones, surveillance cameras, and credit cards, all of which record private data and log geographical location. It goes without saying that before the pandemic, the state had been silently and steadily encroaching on American liberty and freedom like a predator in the jungle. But now, given the perfect opportunity to strike, the state has boldly revealed its fearsome figure. It has sprung upon the entire citizenry with tremendous alacrity and it has sunk its fangs quite deep into the marrow of the people before they even have a moment to react. If this trend continues, and if the “emergency” state police powers are not significantly rolled back after the pandemic ends, then America will be no different than Communist China. There will be no more privacy, and no more freedom at all.
If you enjoyed this read, please take a look at Section 2
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