The COVID-19 outbreak is truly frightening. It’s important we all take appropriate precautions: keep our hands clean, cover our cough, and keep a safe distance between ourselves to slow and halt the spread of this pathogen.
We must also be alert to other dangers to our country. Because America is not soil nor an ethnic heritage, no plague alone can harm America. Only fear of each other can threaten the sacred light of freedom that defines our nation. In response to the outbreak, local governments have been taking troubling action.
Parents and family are being prosecuted for a Bat Mitzvah party in New Jersey. In Florida, a pastor was arrested for holding church services. In Rhode Island, state police and national guard troops are searching door-to-door for New Yorkers to enforce quarantine orders. Locally, Rockford city leaders have taken it upon themselves to determine what is and is not an “essential” business, who’s allowed to earn their living, and, distressingly, who isn’t.
These actions are taken with the claim that public safety is adequate justification for violating Constitutionally protected rights. We’ve heard this argument before, used to justify stop-and-frisk, enhanced interrogations, forced internment, and other dark chapters of our nation’s history. That argument was wrong then, it is wrong now.
The Bill of Rights exists to protect us from the more dangerous consequences of our fear, to ensure that no matter the hazard we face, we will still be true to our national creed. These essential Constitutional protections will only function if we insist they be honored by our elected leaders without exception, and hold those leaders accountable when they don’t.
I’m Frank Dyke, and that’s my perspective.
