by Lee Duigon
Once upon a time American colonists, enraged by the high-handed tactics of Great Britain’s Parliament, threw a whole shipment of tea into Boston Harbor rather than pay a tax imposed on them without their having any say in it.
Could we do that today? Or would an environmental impact statement keep us quiet and submissive?
The tea tax, in that it was levied on the colonists without them having any opportunity to debate it, and certainly no chance to vote on it, because they had no representation in Parliament—that tax was less like a law and more like one of those “mandates” we hear so much of lately.
Our country was set up as a republic whose people governed themselves through their elected representatives. Laws didn’t just materialize out of the ether. They had to be proposed, publicly debated, and then voted on by the legislature. At every step of the process was room for further discussion and possible amendment.
Our system served us for 200 years and more. But now in 2020, thanks to the Chinese Communist Death Virus, we’ve abandoned it in less time than it takes a child to hand over his lunch money to a bully.
Laws? Who has time for laws? The Virus doesn’t give us time for any such luxuries as laws!
So what we have instead of laws is “mandates.” These are handed down as from Olympus by governors, mayors, and appointed, not elected, bureaucrats—no legislation, no debate, no vote. Mandates have stifled our economy, ruined businesses, gutted personal savings, and confined us to only those places deemed “essential” by the government—permitting us to go there if we jump through the hoop of “social distancing.”
So… When we started to re-open the economy before it was quite dead altogether, The Virus retaliated with “spikes” in some of those states where The Great Lockdown was being lifted. We have not been told just how sick the people in those spikes were getting.
The solution?
No more state and city mandates. No! What we need now is a big fat “federal mandate”—and Democrats Joe Biden, their presidential candidate, and Squeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, are all set to give us one.
The federal mandate, they say, will be imposed on us by the Center for Disease Control.
Have you ever *voted* to elect anyone to the CDC? Oh, but that’d be representative government! We don’t have time for that! Hey, if it saves one life, scuttling our whole system of government will be worth it—right?
We might as well have paid the tea tax.
Mandates. Since when has America been governed by an endless string of mandates? We can’t even take it to the Supreme Court because Chief Justice Roberts will just vote against us like he always does. It’s been a long time since he met a Far Left project that he didn’t like.
When can we get back to being a republic—to being America? Never, if the Democrat Party has its way. Create the chaos, blame it on Trump, and they’re back in the White House. God help us.
Yeahbut, yeahbut! It’s The Virus, man! If we wait for actual laws to be passed—or not—we’re all gonna get sick and die. Don’t we want to be *safe*?
Benjamin Franklin said it best: Those who trade liberty for security deserve neither.
We’re letting them steal our country out from under us, mandate by mandate. And why we’re not a great deal madder about it than we are… is a mystery to me.
I have discussed this and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/ . Stop in for a visit (if The Virus hasn’t got you yet); a single click will take you there. My articles can also be found at www.chalcedon.edu/ .
© 2020 Lee Duigon – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net
