- End the COVID Lockdowns by Urging Your Representatives to Fight Back - November 25, 2020
President Trump was right not to impose COVID-19 restrictions from the federal level, leaving to the states to decide how to handle the spread of the disease. However, governors and mayors across the country, drunk with their newfound power, have gone way too far. Some of these dictates seem arbitrary and make little sense.
The governors and mayors may say they are looking out for the people, but don’t forget the old adage: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Mandating, by executive order, what people can and cannot do inside their own homes, threatening to use police power to enforce these mandates, and incentivizing people to report their neighbors for “bad” behavior, smacks of Nazism and is anathema to freedom and liberty for which the United States stands as a beacon for people around the world.
It is time for the peoples’ representatives in local and state government to stand up and protect their constituents from this tyrannical power grab by reining in the executive branch. Citizens are clamoring for a restoration of checks and balances, but the legislatures have so far continued their complacency and failed to act. If they think this executive overreach will end with COVID-19, they are sadly mistaken.
Recalls are nice, but that won’t solve the problem. If legislators don’t put the brakes on executive power, the next governor will continue to exercise it. Once lawmaking power (by executive order) is ceded to one individual, the great ideas that shaped this country will be lost to history. Limits must be restored on the executive branch. Executive action as law making is a slippery slope that will be difficult if not impossible to stop. Who will decide in the future what is an emergency requiring executive action? Who knows what Biden would do as President at the federal level?
It would be much more in keeping with the American value of liberty to continue to encourage individuals to act responsibly to try to slow the spread of the disease. Most people rationally react to the science of the day, which changes regularly, to do just that. But the science is by no means settled about what methods work to stop COVID-19, other than staying away from other people.
Stop this march toward tyranny, restore the checks and balances inherent in our system of government that have served us well for hundreds of years, and let people be free to make their own decisions how to act. Yes, this may result in more spread of this unprecedented disease, but rational people will figure out how to avoid it. What we need is more real information and less government overreach.
“Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” – Lord Acton
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Heartland Institute works closely with state legislators, and has hosted Zoom webinars urging them to do much of what is outlined in this piece. One of those webinars can be seen below.
