The Right of the People to Be Secure in Their Persons
Do we really think "information technology can't happen here" in America? Could we quarantine the constitution? Are we doing it already?
Panics from pandemics unleash unchecked governmental power. The very premise of popular films like 5 for Vendetta reveal this: a group uses a virus to seize power and create a totalitarian gild. Anyone could witness this from far-off lands, watching the news about Mainland china locking people up in their own homes and then removing them screaming from those homes whenever the state wanted. World War I and the Great Depression birthed virulent forms of governments with leaders like Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and Stalin.
Governments across America already used the pandemic, and the media-stoked panic around the pandemic particularly, to limit, restrict or remove Get-go Amendment freedoms of speech and free association, with officials complaining about the potential restraints the freedom of religion imposed upon them. Others denied or alleged the correct to deny Second Amendment rights of gun purchase for personal safety (at a fourth dimension governments are issuing no-arrest and no-detention orders for a broad range of crimes in their customs while publicly freeing inmates from jails and prisons). They want to coordinate with tech companies to surveil and spy on your everyday movements and activities, in violation of the Quaternary Amendment and potentially waive, unilaterally, your medical right to privacy in multiple contexts. Stay-at-dwelling orders deprive you of your profession, occupation, business organization and property, without any due process of law at all beyond an executive fiat in violation of the Fifth Subpoena right to due process. Governments request the say-so to involuntarily imprison any American on mere fright of infection without any probable cause of law-breaking or clear and present danger of impairment by that person's volitional deport, deny access to personal counsel in an unsupervised, un-surveilled manner in violation of the Sixth Amendment, and human activity every bit approximate, jury and executioner in violation of the Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury, as jury trials themselves get suspended around the country in the nation'due south quieted courts and fear-muted public.
The real pandemic threat is hither. It's the panic that volition quarantine our Constitution.
First Amendment Quarantined?
Already, governments in America suspended the First Amendment liberty of millions of citizens with shutdown, stay-at-home, curfew orders that prohibit obtaining a petition for a public protestation, or fifty-fifty existence physically present for a public protest. Indeed, even meetings in "more than than 10" are prohibited by various governing jurisdictions within the U.s.. Surprising places like Missouri did so. Towns like Hartford did then. Maryland shortly followed suit. The issue of the stay-at-dwelling orders of New York, California, Nevada, Illinois and Pennsylvania effectively achieve the same outcome. Other governing officials recognized the dubious lawlessness of these orders, only remain outliers. Call up the Hong Kong protests? Gone. Recollect the Yellow Vest protests? Before long to be gone. Seen any protests on American streets today? A pandemic is here. Protests gone. Constitution quarantined.
Too on rt.com Covid-nineteen dismantles the hollow commandments of European liberalism
2nd Amendment Quarantined?
But that is not all. Under the guise of "unnecessary businesses," "emergency powers," or only by furloughing or reducing staff in the background checks department, governments show the willingness to limit 2d Amendment rights as well as Starting time Subpoena protections. Mayors declare the correct to ban gun sales, governments declare no background-check personnel to process a groundwork check, delaying gun sales indefinitely, and other governments simply shut down all gun sales businesses entirely. Most worrisome, this happens while governments release inmates into the streets, and discussreleasing fifty-fifty more, and, at the same fourth dimension, issue no-arrest and no-detention orders from Philadelphia to Fort Worth for a wide range of criminals. Desire to defend yourself, give yourself a deep sense of personal protection that comes with gun ownership for many, as the Second Amendment safeguards? Well, no luck, according to too many of our governing overlords. A pandemic is hither. Self-protection sacrificed. Constitution quarantined.
Fourth Amendment Quarantined?
Few protections are more American than the right to privacy confronting coerced, compelled, secretive, subversive invasion. The authorities operates like a virus in a instance of a pandemic panic, infecting our minds and bodies, monitoring speech, association and motion, with tools of surveillance unthought-of to the founders. Analogous with private companies (unrestrained by the Fourth Amendment; why do you lot retrieve NSA uses them to gather all your emails, conversations, texts, and internet searches, at the first stage?), governments used the panic about the pandemic, a panic the regime itself stoked with assistance of a compliant, complicit press, to waive your medical privacy and invade your personal privacy, looking for tools to monitor your every motility, associations, activities, and beliefs. The watching middle in the sky can now be the Alexa in your home, the camera on your figurer, and the telephone in your hand. A pandemic is here. Privacy ended. Constitution quarantined.
Fifth Amendment Quarantined?
The protection for our right to make a living arises from the Fifth Amendment right to property without deprivation past due process of police, and the obligation for the government to recoup any such takings. Yet, governments beyond America did just that to millions of businesses, workers, and property owners, stripping them of their ability to brand a living, or even to engage in a free marketplace of commerce, past shutdown orders, curfews, and stay-calm orders. The political and professional class ensconced in its work-from-home environs fails to appreciate the hardship this imposes on working people. No compensation. No substitution. No wages. No revenues. No opportunity. Labor lost that can never be recovered, always, while it leaves our economy teetering on the edge of a worst-always depression. The foundation of authorities is to protect the pursuit of happiness. Now all we get to pursue is Netflix-and-arctic and hope miracles happen to pay next week's bills, and pray the marketplace doesn't crash like in 1929. A pandemic is hither. Opportunity & belongings gone. Constitution quarantined.
Conclusion
Our founders were intimately familiar with pandemics, viruses and plagues, yet they did not permit whatsoever to suspend our Constitutional liberties. Not one word in the Constitution well-nigh plagues or pandemics to exempt the government from any of our Bill of Rights. Why do our current courts allow it? Because the public is asleep at the wheel. Remember the pandemic threatens to kills us all? A review of the data shows the pandemic is more panic than plague.
Time to wake upward. Maybe it is time in the motto of V for Vendetta, to "Remember, recall the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot." Equally that film's atomic number 82 graphic symbol well said: "People shouldn't exist afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people." Only when an awake public asserts their human liberties to protest the loss of their liberties will, then, governments quit using public health crises to seize ability that does not vest to them. The answer to 1984 is even so 1776.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this cavalcade are solely those of the author and exercise not necessarily represent those of RT.
Source: https://www.rt.com/op-ed/483758-coronavirus-constitutional-rights-government/
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