I have been critical of the illegal and unconstitutional actions some of our nation’s governors and mayors have taken during the COVID-19 crisis, who believe that they can use the COVID-19 emergency to violate the Constitution, but Mayor Bill deBlasio (NSDAP-New York City) takes first prize in the fascist authoritarian derby:
NYC may close churches, synagogues that don’t comply with coronavirus orders, de Blasio warns
By Vandana Rambaran | Fox News | May 29, 2020
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio warned Friday that the city could shut down certain places of worship if people continued to violate the state’s stay-at-home mandates and continue congregating for religious services there.
“A small number of religious communities, specific churches and specific synagogues are unfortunately not paying attention to this guidance even though it’s so widespread,” de Blasio, a Democrat, said at a news conference on the coronavirus outbreak.
City officials have continued to work rigorously to control the spread of COVID-19 as cases climbed over 1,000 on Sunday despite statewide closures of schools and non-essential businesses.
No faith tradition endorses anything that endangers the members of that faith. So, the NYPD, Fire Department, Buildings Department, and everyone has been instructed that if they see worship services going on, they will go to the officials of that congregation, they’ll inform them they need to stop the services and disperse. If that does not happen, they will take additional action up to the point of fines and potentially closing the building permanently.
The First Amendment to the Constitution specifies:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The Fourteenth Amendment has been used by the Supreme Court to ‘incorporate’ the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, to include state and local government action. Yet His Dishonor would prohibit the free exercise of religion, the way that some others have attempted to abridge the right of the people peaceably to assemble.
These idiotic mayors, and Mr deBlasio is but one of those who believes he has the right to be an authoritarian dictator, need to be slapped down, slapped down hard. They think that they are saving lives, but what they are doing is killing our constitutional rights. If we surrender them, ‘temporarily,’ because it’s an ’emergency,’ who can know when the next ’emergency’ will see them surrendered again.
Apparently we have learned nothing from history, nothing. In 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg, at the urging of Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler, issued a decree suspending the freedom of speech and of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, and the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications. Warrants for house searches and orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property were also made less difficult to get, all because of the ’emergency’ of the Reichstag fire. Scream “Emergency, emergency!” and it seems that you can get anything passed, in 1933 Germany, and 2020 America.
It wasn’t long after, slightly less than a month actually, that the Reichstag and Reichsrat passed the Enabling Act, which allowed the cabinet, technically, but the Reichs Chancellor, in practice, to issue decrees which had the full force of parliamentary-passed law, making Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship legal and official. In the United States, in 2020, we haven’t even taken that step, but are allowing governors and mayors to get away with ruling by decree, and they are doing so to almost universal praise by the very people on whose rights they are trampling.
It is incredible, really. The left have been screaming that President Trump is a fascist and a dictator ever since November 9, 2016, but they are meekly accepting dictatorial actions and authority by several Democratic governors and mayors. Sadly, a few Republican executives have done the same things.
Der Führer’s dictatorship was a popular one. He took strong steps to fight the Depression, dramatically cutting unemployment (though workers’ rights were greatly curtailed), he ended what the people saw as the injustice of the Versailles Treaty, put on the spectacular show of the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and incorporated Austria and part of Czechoslovakia into the Reich, all without war. Oh, certain people didn’t like it: homosexuals, Gypsies and, most of all, the Jews, but the vast majority of the public were not homosexuals or Gypsies or Jews, and much of the public helped the Nazi regime by pointing out who the ‘undesirables’ were.
And the authoritarianism of our mayors and governors seems to be popular here as well. There are 1,600+ responses to Governor Phil Purphy’s (NSDAP-NJ) tweet, in which he said,
NO CORONA PARTIES. They’re illegal, dangerous, and stupid. We will crash your party. You will pay a big fine. And we will name & shame you until EVERYONE gets this message into their heads,
and the vast majority were positive. It had 71,200+ “likes” on Twitter, and idiots like Vanessa Shives responding:
Dear @GovMurphy why can’t you just arrest them so they have a criminal record that follows them for the rest of their lives?
In Kentucky, we have been treated to the spectacle of fawning adoration of Governor Andy Beshear (NSDAP-KY), who had ordered the virtual house arrest, enforced by armed guards, of a COVID-19 positive man who refused to self-quarantine.
Gun grabbers like Governor Murphy, Tom Wolf (NSDAP-PA) and John Carney (NSDAP-DE) included gun stores in their ‘non-essential’ business closure orders, trying to restrict people’s Second Amendment rights, though the latter two eventually backed off.
This will not end well. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, so many have surrendered essential liberty in the hopes of some temporary security from COVID-19. Dr Franklin was literally risking his life to sign the Declaration of Independence, while Americans today are mostly risking far less. While potentially deadly, most of those who do contract COVID-19 survive it, though uncomfortably for a couple of weeks.
The greater risk of death is to our constitutional rights, not because the Constitution has changed, but because so many have proven so willing to surrender their rights.