It’s against the law...

Remember when we had three branches of government that provided checks and balances on each other? That was cool.

One aspect of lockdowns that was widely ignored was that—at least in the U.S.—they were a violation of basic constitutional law and civics. This was surely true in many other countries as well, as many are supposed to have similar constitutional protections and government structure. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was violated too. In addition, many restrictions violated common law protections.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Period. The Constitution very clearly does not allow for this right to be suspended—let alone completely gutted—during a pandemic. Yet some states prohibited even the smallest private gatherings. Nearly all arbitrarily prohibited movement of some type.

The Oregon county that suspended habeas corpus also violated the Constitution, which declares habeas corpus shall not be suspended “unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” A pandemic is not a rebellion. Besides, the main reason habeas corpus would ever be suspended is if the courts had to close. Yet courts in that county had been conducting trials remotely, which shows they were able to be open in some fashion.

The Palo Alto Daily Post reported in March 2020 that stay-at-home orders could face legal challenges. Larry Gostin—a Georgetown University law professor and former general secretary for Britain’s National Council for Civil Liberties who also worked on Hillary Clinton’s healthcare plan—told NPR that the orders ran roughshod over “the most fundamental constitutional rights and the right to freedom of movement, the right to freedom of travel.” This was even though Gostin later complained about lawsuits hamstringing the CDC’s limitless powers, as he praised a brief by a bipartisan group of former CDC directors supporting these unchecked powers.

Most pandemic orders in the U.S. were executive actions—with no review by the legislative or judicial branches. In other words, a governor or mayor simply barked down an order. Instead of enforcing existing laws—which is their job—they made up their own laws. The 50 states, D.C., and the U.S. outlying territories were actually over 50 absolute dictatorships—minus the very few that didn’t lock down. Governors did what they wanted, no matter how irrational. They couldn’t very well claim it was an emergency after it had gone on for three years. That’s because, by definition, an emergency lasts only a short time.

Ruling by decree is not how we govern in a democratic republic.

In some cases, it wasn’t even elected officials who issued these executive fiats. It was often an unelected bureaucrat from a health department or some other agency. Some parts of the U.S. had orders issued by an unelected health official that were actually called executive orders—as if they were from the governor or President. This was even worse than a power-mad governor, because where’s the accountability to voters? These officials turned “Dr.” into a title of nobility.

In some counties in Colorado, an unelected health department even overruled elected county commissioners. SFGATE reported that elected county supervisors in California had no power to repeal the decrees of the county’s unelected health commissioner. In July 2022, the right-wing Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that unelected health officers may unilaterally issue orders. That case dated from 2020, when the plaintiffs sued over a county order banning indoor gatherings. Health officials in one area of Michigan said that while they disagreed with the orders of the health director—who yet again was unelected—elected county commissioners could not overturn them.

A PBS story in April 2020 claimed state and local governments could issue lockdowns because the Tenth Amendment gave them “police power.” That is simply wrong. This phrase is not found anywhere in the Tenth Amendment. In fact, as stated above, lockdowns violated the First Amendment’s safeguard of free assembly.

In November 2020, President Trump was narrowly defeated for reelection by Joe Biden. Biden was going on 78 and was well past his prime. His policy stances seemed to have dwindled to nothing, and it seemed as if he mostly just read from file cards and teleprompters. The Biden administration’s policies were shaped primarily by Democratic hacks who acted in bad faith and had abandoned poor and working-class voters. Despite Trump’s earlier hostility to habeas corpus, the disregard of basic civics only seemed to accelerate once Biden took office. This happened even though vaccines were floating around out there by the time Biden was inaugurated. Anything the CDC said was treated as law—not just guidance—even though the CDC is not supposed to be a legislative body. If the CDC had been writing laws before, it would be illegal to eat sushi or hamburgers cooked rare. What’s next, a law against watching TV in the dark? The Transportation Security Administration—part of the long out-of-control Department of Homeland Security—was also allowed to make law. Almost 20 years earlier, the DHS was viewed as a personal plaything of the George W. Bush administration, and Biden—then a senator—spoke to a reporter about the importance of upholding civil liberties even in times of crisis. As President, however, Biden has done nothing to rein in the DHS.

The Internet is rife with apologia for this alphabet soup of rogue agencies, but much of it is from sockpuppet accounts and paid trolls. Regarding a lawsuit against the TSA, one website comment read, “So tired of those who think they’re special and exempt from laws/rules that everyone else follows. I hope he has to pay the legal bills for TSA too.” The plaintiff was legally exempt, dummy. Plus, the TSA didn’t deserve a penny after its 20-year history of abuse. (This is the same TSA that earlier denied the existence of the “no fly” list—which helped inspire the Chinese Communist Party’s Social Credit System. Obviously, the TSA has trouble telling the truth.)

Dr. Naomi Wolf, a progressive who had worked for national Democrats and participated in Occupy Wall Street, wrote on Twitter after Biden’s election, “If I’d known Biden was open to ‘lockdowns’ as he now states, which is something historically unprecedented in any pandemic, and a terrifying practice, one that won’t ever end because elites love it, I would never have voted for him.” Wolf’s worries were not unfounded. Back in August 2020, Biden was talking about lockdowns and told ABC’s David Muir, “I would shut it down. I would listen to the scientists.”

According to a panelist of an online discussion that I viewed, practicing physicians in the U.S. are actually prohibited from speaking out against CDC guidelines—which seems to be a violation of their constitutionally protected right to free speech. This seemed to create a false consensus among doctors in support of CDC guidelines, as those who disfavor the guidelines are silenced. In addition, some government employees are actually barred from making statements that contradict official policy—another free speech violation.

The U.S. Constitution prohibits compacts among states unless authorized by Congress. Yet, during the pandemic, numerous states entered into compacts with other states in their region to enact COVID measures in unison.

There was occasional progress. Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, signed two bills that limited her own emergency powers. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill passed by the New York state legislature, controlled by fellow Democrats, to rescind his pandemic powers. However, most governors clung to their unchecked authority for dear life. This also doesn’t excuse the repeated disastrous pandemic decisions by the likes of Cuomo and Kelly. Plus, after Cuomo was relieved of the governorship because of his sexual harassment scandal, he was replaced by the despicable Gov. Kathy Hochul, who immediately defied the law that limited gubernatorial powers.

Pennsylvania voters approved a pair of ballot measures in May 2021 to amend the state constitution to limit governors’ emergency powers. However, Gov. Tom Wolf outright defied these measures later. He argued that the measures didn’t limit COVID orders—even though they were written to do exactly that. In Rhode Island, lawmakers limited the emergency powers of Gov. Dan McKee. McKee whined about that like the big crybaby he was.

Incidentally, the Democratic Party of Pennsylvania is now on record as being a right-wing authoritarian party—at least by its historic definition—for it officially opposed the measures to limit abuse of emergency powers. If a party 30 years earlier had supported unlimited executive power, people would have called it a right-wing authoritarian party. Why should it be any different today?

Even all this wasn’t enough for our rulers. Some countries—such as the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil—are federations where most pandemic policies were set by states, provinces, or territories. Yet states exercising tyrannical powers was insufficient to enchant a bipartisan panel of “experts” that in June 2022 demanded sweeping new powers for the U.S. federal government. According to the New York Times, this panel was ready to demand the creation of a new unelected position: undersecretary for public health. The undersecretary would have the power to compel states to enact certain policies, such as lockdowns. Dr. Julie Gerberding—a panelist who served as CDC director under George W. Bush—boasted of this “national approach.”

Similarly, in late 2022, leaders of the European Union released a document urging rules that would be binding on member countries.

There was also a proposal to amend international law to authorize the WHO to require countries to censor medical “misinformation” and implement other restrictions.

As for the United States, I learned about the three branches of government in seventh grade civics class, yet grown men and women who were in government couldn’t even grasp it? There’s no way they didn’t know what each branch was supposed to do. This means they didn’t care, and that they were actually rejecting democracy.

But as Nancy Pelosi mumbled, “Freedom and democracy and one thing. Security here. If we don’t have—we can’t have either if we don’t have both. So security, economics—security, economy, again they’re all—and governance. They’re all related.”