Rights, Freedoms, Liberties and Necessities Amidst COVID-19

Based upon recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Governor of your state, or mayor of your town orders numerous businesses and activities to be temporarily paused, halted, or ceased. (Take your pick of the choice of words, which essentially mean the same thing. Although “temporarily paused” sounds more palatable, in my estimation.) That includes practically every type of operation, ranging from retail to warehouse, to factory, to office… including corporate worship services.

Suddenly, people lose their jobs, their health insurance, their income, maybe even their residences, either rented, or mortgaged, and their private transportation.

It seems as if the world has come to a virtual, if not practical, standstill. Many grocery stores remain open, albeit with modified hours and operations, as do gasoline and diesel fuel stations, and hardware stores because they’re considered “essential” businesses. Barber shops, beauty salons and their suppliers, however, are shuttered. Restaurants and bars have closed, some which face certain bankruptcy. Yet banks and other financial operations remain open… including the stock markets, because they too, are considered “essential.” Suffice it to say, numerous sports games are cancelled.

Other “essential” businesses, such as farms and the plant facilities that process the animals and milk, are suddenly in a bind, because the low-wage employees who work there have become infected with COVID-19 coronavirus disease, and have “spread the love” to their co-workers, most of whom were not provided with either adequate safety equipment by their employers, nor were given any modifications to provide for adequate distancing to ameliorate the chance of spreading, or contracting the disease. The President can “order” them to remain open as long as he likes, but if there’s no one to work the lines… and I sincerely doubt the suits know how to do it.

Farmers in some states, notably New York, have complained that their milk supplies are suddenly becoming stockpiled, and they are being reduced to wasting it, and other products made from it. In response, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has told farmers of that state that the state will take all of their present “excess” product, and distribute it to needy families, which have suddenly become almost too numerous to count. The farmers consented.

Idaho potato farmers are giving away their crops as well, since critical links in the food supply chain have been broken, and left them unable to deliver their products to market. It remains to be seen what the pork, poultry, egg, and beef producers will do. Fisheries will simply stop collecting their stock for harvest. Pregnant sows (female pigs) will be administered abortifacients. Fowl will be fed, eggs will be laid, cattle will be fattened, and cows will be milked.

A note on the concentrated industrialization of American farms:

That’s NOT a good idea, and inherently, not only is it a violation of anti-trust laws which promote competition, but it’s a bad idea managerially because if one hiccups or sneezes, the whole industry gets sick. There’s STRENGTH in diversification, and as the old adage goes,

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

But for all the good that many, if not most, are doing, there remain a few crybabies, whinos, and belligerents whose cacophonous voices rasp the ears of those who have the misfortune of hearing them.

They bitch, moan, groan, cry, whine, and complain that they can’t do this, that, or the other. Their barbers, beauty operators, gym operators, and others are concerned not only for their own personal welfare, but for their clientele’s welfare, and have temporarily shuttered operations, for the greater good of their communities.

Apparently,
there’s more money to be made cutting and styling the hair of the living,
than of the dead.

But the loudmouths scream at the governors, or mayors, instead of the ones who are doing their part to keep the public healthy and safe. What’s more, they invade state capitol buildings, armed to the teeth like mercenaries, or vigilantes. To call them insurrectionists would be more accurate.

Meanwhile, some houses of worship have cancelled corporate attendance, and are conducting services “virtually” via the Internet with their congregants. Some, however, have been rebellious and have continued to jointly assemble for corporate worship. Most of those whom have been mentioned, or singled out, have been Protestants of the make-your-own-church variety – the type wherein one needn’t prove a calling, or demonstrate understanding of the Scriptures or holy writ they espouse, by graduating from an institution of higher education where such subjects are taught by the learned.

This is America.

The Land of the Free, and Home of the Brave – where the right and freedom to swing your fist ends where someone else’s nose begins.

I am sympathetic to those who, for religious reasons, would disobey such orders, for it seems to me that such orders are contrary to the First Amendment’s guaranteed right and freedoms of speech, assembly, and worship.

However, it is EXTREMELY unwise, even dangerous, to assemble in such conditions. The religious faithful are not immune to “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them,” as the Declaration of Independence states. And yet, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them,” though to date, they have not so mentioned any such thing and instead, have shown up fully armed and dressed for mortal combat.

I suspect that if any case were to make it to the Supreme Court, and there very well may be at least one such case in the not-too-distant-future, it would be ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, which in this case would be The People.

America has certain freedoms that other nations don’t enjoy – including ostensibly “free” and “Western” nations such as England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc. And here’s where a quote from good ol’ Ben Franklin comes in handy.

“Those who would give up essential Liberty,
to purchase a little temporary Safety,
deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

That, of course, was penned November 11, 1755 to “Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor” which is printed in Votes and Proceedings of the House of Representatives, 1755–1756 (Philadelphia, 1756), pp. 19–21.

There’s little-to-no question that COVID-19 novel coronavirus disease has put the ENTIRE WORLD in a tizzy. And the tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist krazees have come out of the woodwork en masse, or so it seems.

I think the states’ governors would have been much better served if they had adopted an approach which realized that those “essential” liberties could be dangerously encroached by their orders, and made room for some type of reasonable accommodation which would have included social distancing recommendations and guidelines, including curfews, and orders for businesses to also participate in the process by limiting the number of clientele inside stores, based upon public square footage, with penalties for violations of the same.

And to the tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist, loaded-gun-toting insurrectionist krazees begging for armed confrontation inside states’ capitols and elsewhere:

Go home.

Put your toys away in a locked safe toybox, and act like rational, reasonable human beings with some modicum of intelligence.

And DON’T be threatening to kill the governor if you don’t get your way. That doesn’t do anything for your looks.