The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the so-called, president Trump are leading an assault on the quarantine measures of wearing masks, staying home, and social distancing that can slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and save lives. Their followers are demonstrating and arguing on social media, and, in some cases, even killing security guards, to assert their “constitutional rights”.
Let’s consider this. There is always a problem when we discuss rights in society. No one person is absolutely autonomous. Only sociopaths, and two year olds, think that they are. Individual rights are always limited by the need to respect the needs and the rights of others. As Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said: “Your right to swing your arm around ends where my nose begins.” The US Supreme Court has always considered the Declaration of Independence to be part and parcel with the Constitution, as it was truly the founding document of the nation. The most famous sentence is its second:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
It should be noted that the war for independence was not fought for this, or any, noble cause, but was just one bunch of rich aristocrats who did not want to pay taxes to another bunch of rich aristocrats anymore. When the US constitution was written, the grand sentiment regarding rights had been forgotten altogether. There was no mention of guarantee of rights in the original document. In fact, it institutionalized black slavery and valued black men at 3/5 that of a white man, and women were not mentioned at all, as they were regarded as chattel. The constitution that these ‘common, middle class folk’ keep touting as some sacred document, was written to ensure that old, rich, white men continue in power.
It has succeeded.
The Bill of Rights had to be added as amendments. They were afterthoughts. Madison and the Virginia delegation would not ratify it without them. To this day, they are only as good as the money and the lawyers one has to fight for their enforcement. There were state churches until 1846. Now they are making a comeback with the government subsidizing churches along with businesses in the stimulus (CARES) act.
So even though the bulk of the constitution is a horribly flawed document, and every other nation which has used it (and there have been several) has fallen into tyranny within a decade, we do have the Bill of Rights. It has been eroded in recent years, however. One should notice that the Declaration says “all men are endowed by their creator”. When the US opened Gitmo to illegally detain prisoners who were not charged with any specific crime and used torture, etc., the Bush administration claimed that they did not have rights, since they were not on American soil. First of all, this is false. Gitmo is a US Army base, flying a US flag, making it de jure US soil! Secondly, if Guantanamo is not US soil, it must be Cuba and Cuba guarantees human rights, which the US violated. Thirdly, rights are not given by any state or nation! They are said to be god-given, meaning that even the government cannot revoke or ignore them.
OK. If you want to exercise your god-given, constitutional rights in the midst of the pandemic, please know that the first right that is mentioned is the right to life, not the right to be an asshole and spread a deadly disease. The right to life, as it relates to society, means that it is your responsibility to do your best to not do harm or to take anyone else’s life. It is the government’s responsibility to enforce rules and regulations to help you to do just that. When you flout those rules, you should expect the full force of the law and the shame of the community to fall on you.