To the editor:
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin.
The point being that your rights are not supposed to be suspended just because there's a virus. Your rights are “essential” too. Look how fast many democrat governors and mayors tossed that concept right out the window. These “orders” — stay home, close your business, keep apart, close the schools, don't go to church, etc. — are guidelines, without the force of law. Congress and the legislature make laws, executives don’t.
Certainly the states have a compelling interest in fighting the virus. However, closing churches meets no constitutional standard. The right of Americans to freely travel from place to place and state to state was originally enshrined in the Articles of Confederation. The “Right to Travel” was left out of the Bill of Rights because the Founding Fathers felt it was so obvious and self evident, it didn’t need to be written down. Aren’t there less restrictive ways of accomplishing these recommendations?
As bad as they are, pandemics do not nullify the Constitution. In every other quarantine in history the plan was to isolate the ill and the vulnerable. In the 2020 quarantine: isolate all healthy people who make the economy run, causing untold amounts of human misery through lost jobs and revenue.
Governors and local executives must adhere to the Constitution at all times, not just when convenient. Remember, once you forfeit a valuable liberty it’s very difficult to recoup.
Charles Alexyon
Riverside

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