Justice Neil Gorsuch on the disasters wrought during the reign of Government Pandemic Power.
Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local were leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but with criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.
At the federal level, there immigration decrees, vaccine mandates, the regulation of landlord and tenant relations and pressure on social media companies to suppress misinformation.
The concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government.
Make no mistake decisive executive action is sometimes necessary and appropriate. But if emergency decrees promise to solve some problems, they threaten to generate others. And rule by indefinite emergency edict risks leaving all of us with
a shell of a democracy and civil liberties just as hollow
Too bad Joe Biden and the progressives remain clueless.
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