Civil disobedience is the solution for this COVID-19 madness
By Cheryl K. Chumley - The Washington Times - Monday, November 16, 2020
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Scott Atlas, the medical professional who’s been tasked under President Donald Trump to help decide best coronavirus practices and policies, called for citizens, particularly in Michigan, particularly in tyrannically-governed Michigan, to “rise up” and fight unconstitutional crackdowns from overreaching, overbearing public servants.
He’s right.
The longer this coronavirus madness goes on, the more apparent it becomes: civil disobedience and only civil disobedience will rein in the, well, madness.
Here’s what Atlas said, via Twitter: “The only way this stops is if people rise up. You get what you accept. #FreedomMatters. #StepUp.”
He also tweeted this, an apparent clarification: “Hey, I NEVER was talking at all about violence. People vote, people peacefully protest. NEVER would I endorse or incite violence. NEVER!!”
His tweets came after Michigan’s resident-in-tyranny Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced new crackdowns on freedoms due to, sigh, sigh, once again, the coronavirus. Specifically, she announced a three-week ban on indoor dining; on in-person learning in high schools and in colleges and universities; on in-person working “when work can be done from home;” on organized sports; on theater, movie, stadium, and arena attendance; on bowling, on ice skating, on indoor water park play; on bingo-ing in bingo halls, on gambling in casinos; and on going to the gym to take group fitness classes.
I am zee law.
Happily, she didn’t ban the buying of seeds this time.
She also graciously allowed for the playing of professional sports — minus the spectators — and for the mourning at funerals, so long as not more than 25 were in attendance.
Strangely, preschools, kindergartens, elementary schools and middle schools through grade eight, along with day cares, can remain open. Because the coronavirus only infects the higher grade levels?
Anyhow, Whitmer, as expected, expressed shock and awe — shock and awe! — at Atlas’s tweets.
“It actually took my breath away, to tell you the truth,” she told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” in reference to the tweets.
But here’s the thing, America: At what point do coronavirus crackdowns on freedoms become unacceptable?
At what point is the breaking point?
Founding Fathers knew well the reluctance of a people to “rise up,” as Atlas put it, and cast off an unjust government. They wrote, in fact, in the Declaration of Independence that “all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
True.
Look around at all the face mask-wearing people, take note of all the business closings and church attendance limits, take a gander at all the kids home from school and it’s clear: “Mankind are more disposed to suffer.”
But these same Founding Fathers also wrote this: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.”
Peaceably, if possibly.
Are we there yet?
If Michigan were the only state, if Whitmer were the only governor, taking this coronavirus chaos and running roughshod over personal rights, maybe America could afford to ride out the storm, wait out the virus, patiently obey all the orders.
But the nonsense is widespread, from California to Michigan to Virginia to Massachusetts.
Atlas is right. Founders were right.
Civil disobedience is the only way to reel in the madness. Americans must beat back the health bureaucrats and political opportunists now — or forever wear the face mask. Forever cede freedoms. Forever give government the right to rule, not serve.
