Episode 63 Show Notes- Liberty, Once Lost, Is Lost Forever
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Episode Description
This episode is not about the coronavirus, but the bigger picture of what we do in times of crisis. It’s about how Americans are largely responsible and disciplined. But it also illustrates how often we take our basic rights for granted, and how quickly we can lose these rights. It highlights how willing we are to give up our natural given rights when we are scared, and the lack of appreciation for Liberty- a concept that’s supposed to be instilled in our DNA. How fear is driving us towards a “new normal” and it’s this idea of a new normal that we need to question. Many of us don’t realize how quickly a free country can slide into tyranny.
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Intro
Welcome to The P.A.S. Report Podcast. This is your host Nick Giordano and I hope you are having a good week.
This is an extremely important episode because I want to explore the concept of liberty in the coronavirus era. Sitting home for the last 5-weeks got me to start thinking about the idea of liberty. Now, if you have listened to this podcast before, you know that I emphasize freedom, liberty, limited government, and holding government accountable. You know how I emphasize that We the People hold the power, not the bureaucratic elite. Not the elected representatives.
This episode is not about the coronavirus. Rather, I want to explore what we are willing to give up in times of crisis. I applaud the American people for being patient. American’s are largely responsible and well-disciplined. We comply with government directives because we care about our communities, our neighbors, and our families.
However, I do want to discuss how often we take our basic rights for granted quickly, and how quickly we can lose these rights. How fear is driving us towards a “new normal” and it’s this idea of a new normal that we need to question.
Before I jump into this episode, go to thepasreport.com to see the show notes, sign up for The P.A.S. Report Newsletter.
Also, be sure to share this episode with others. Post it on all your social media channels- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram- all of them. We need to rediscover what Liberty and Freedom actually mean. We need to rediscover what millions of Americans have died for throughout American history. Send it to all the politicians who seem to have forgotten that we have a Constitution and who are the ones who really hold the power. And that’s We the People.
The idea of Liberty
America, and our vision, reshaped the world. Prior to the existence of the United States, people existed to serve governments and leaders. However, after the repeated abuses by the King of England, our founding fathers were determined to challenge the world order. They wanted to challenge this idea, and they would put everything on the line in order, blood would be shed, in order to show the world that governments exist to serve the people. That the primary role of government is to preserve life and liberty, not destroy it.
So, what is liberty? This is our natural condition. It’s were human beings exercise their freewill responsibly in accord with the dictates of right reason and natural law. It’s the ability to say what we want without fear of being thrown in a gulag. It’s the ability to freely assemble with like-minded individuals and protest the issues we care about. It’s that we can exercise and practice any religion we want, and to freely congregate. It’s the ability to own a firearm in order to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities, not from crooks and thieves, and not to go hunting, but to protect us against an abusive government that is looking to suppress our liberties. The free exercise of our natural rights is what we call liberty.
I want to remind everyone before the leftists start screaming. This is not about the coronavirus and I am not calling for a revolution. I am not saying that we have fully lost these rights. In fact, we can’t lose these rights because they are natural and derived from a higher power. However, government can suppress our natural rights, and I will explain that more later on. I’m simply explaining what liberty means and how it is part of our culture.
Our founding fathers believed that the government should protect our inherent human rights and the idea of liberty.
See, our founders embarked on a difficult challenge to protect the concept of liberty and keep societal order. They had to reconcile the balance between liberty and order. Too much liberty can lead to anarchy and chaos. Too much order leads to a police state.
The Declaration of Independence is the essential document that lays out the American political philosophy and the concept of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They promoted the theory that “governments are instituted amongst men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Now understand, the founding fathers put everything they had on the line for to turn their vision into a reality. I am always awestruck by the last line of the Declaration where Thomas Jefferson wrote, “And for support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
That is why I respect the founders so much. I’ve explained before, and I explain it to each of my classes every semester. Many of the founding fathers were well-off and well-respected under the British Crown. Many were wealthy. They were accepted in the elite circles, and they would have been fine under British rule. However, they saw something that was bigger than themselves. Now, they were well aware that we would be going against the most powerful military in the world at that time. They were also well aware that the chances of success were close to nil. If the British win, anyone who signs this document, are signing their death warrant. Yet, they signed it anyway risking everything including their lives.
Building out our government
Shockingly we win, and we will now build a society based on the concept of liberty. In order to do this, the founders created the Articles of Confederation.
See, the founders worried about an all-powerful central government, so a confederal system was the way to protect the people. Under the Articles of Confederation, we would have a weak central government bound together by a loose coalition of the states.
This system would be based on the 3 Principles of Old Republicanism where they understood that government is artificial, and not a natural entity. That government is created by human beings, and therefore, it will always be flawed. They understood that liberty is better protected in the small state as opposed to a central power. While liberty is at risk from all levels of government, the central government poses the biggest threat because it is so far removed from the people. They also understood that the government that governs the best governs the least. That government power should be as limited as possible.
Unfortunately, the Articles of Confederation, our first form of government, failed, because the central government was so weak. The founders had to reconcile how to grant government more power so that there is order within society and at the same time protect liberty. This is when they embarked on the journey creating the system of federalism.
They would create two levels of government within this system, the federal and the state. Both will have their own respective powers and operate independently of each other. However, it is going to be the people that have control over the system, and we are going to implement safeguards to protect the system from gaining too much power and becoming tyrannical. We are also going to attempt to insulate the system from the mob and the Tyranny of the Majority.
These safeguards include conflict being institutionalized at all levels of government, federal, state and local, between all branches, legislative, judicial and executive, as well as between and within the political parties themselves. They created a system that’s designed to be slow, awkward and inefficient.
They wanted a system that would have a discussion on and debate the issues. They wanted well-thought-out solutions to the problems we face, and with the many interrelated parts, they didn’t want government to get things accomplished unless there was a compromise or universal agreement.
Present-day
This brings us to what’s going on today. I decided to do this episode for two reasons. The first was because being trapped in a house for nearly five-weeks is a long time, and you begin to reflect on certain things. The second reason is that I made a social media post about the importance of liberty, and while most of the responses were supportive, I was very surprised by some of the responses. I’ll talk about both of these at the same time because they are directly related.
In the Facebook post, I said how liberty is supposed to be in our DNA. That it is part of our culture. Now I just gave you, the audience, a brief refresher about the founding fathers and why they believed liberty is so important. I made the observation that in a country that holds liberty in such high regard, how our concept liberty vanished nearly overnight. Here in New York, about five weeks ago, you can do, say or go wherever you wanted. Literally, overnight that changed.
Governors, and a handful of policy and decisionmakers, decided that in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus, and prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed, that it would be necessary to suspend American’s Constitutional and God-given rights. Over the last few weeks, I have watched a video of police officers rip a man off a bus in Pennsylvania for not wearing a facemask. I have seen videos of married couples receive citations for not social distancing even though they share the same residence and sleep in the same bed. I’ve seen videos of police chasing a jogger on an empty beach. And I can go on and on. And it’s not about the police. They are simply being ordered to do this by the politicians. It’s much bigger than that.
In Michigan, the governor, Gretchen Whitmer, has banned travel between residences. Meaning if you want to see another family member that lives somewhere else you can’t. If you want your neighbor to come by, that’s now illegal. Other jurisdictions are telling people they can no longer go for walks outside, and if they do, they will receive a citation. Governors have decided which businesses are deemed essential and which ones are not. In certain jurisdictions, big-box retailers must cordon off the non-grocery store areas to prevent people from buying nonessential items.
We have a federal government where senior public health officials are calling for doing away from shaking hands. Dr. Fauci now says he was semi-serious but stated that we should never shake hands again.
We also have a government that’s discussing the idea of those who have already had the coronavirus, and potentially developed an immunity, being granted an immunity card where they will be allowed to go out into the public.
So, my main question is who empowered all these people to make unilateral decisions that have severe Constitutional implications. My whole life, the belief was that we hold liberty above all. Yet, overnight, our God-given rights are being challenged. It’s not like the legislative bodies, both at the state level and the federal level, are the ones making these new rules up. These are the executives and the bureaucrats that are making these decisions. And even when legislative bodies are involved, they are simply granting an unlimited amount of power to the executives and pushing themselves further toward irrelevancy. If executives essentially have ultimate power in an emergency, what’s the point of the legislative branch, and what happens when we find ourselves in a constant state of crisis.
Remember, in Federalist 47, James Madison warned us what happens when one branch of government gets to make all unilateral decisions. He wrote, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
This is frightening. We have individuals making unilateral decisions that have a tremendous impact on the overall system and our constitutional rights. There are some that argue that we still have our rights and I’m exaggerating.
Well here is a list of constitutional rights being violated.
- We do not have the freedom to assemble in the states with lockdowns. We can only leave our house for essentials like going to the grocery store or going to work if we are considered essential employees.
- We cannot have people in our homes except for those that already live there.
- If you don’t have the freedom to assemble, then can you really exercise freedom of speech. Sure, I can speak out on the internet, or I can put out a podcast, but I cannot voice my opinions to the policymakers. I can’t go to Albany or DC. I can’t go to my legislator’s office.
- Churches and other places of worship can no longer offer in-person services. This is clearly a violation of prohibiting the free exercise of religion.
- The court system is shut down, so you do not have a right to a speedy trial. In fact, the courts will be backlogged for quite some time.
- We have tech giants that are working with the government in an attempt to track spread, ensure compliance with lockdowns, etc. clearly violating your right to privacy. While the tech companies have a right to your data because of privacy agreements you agreed to, they should not be willingly turning this data over to the government. They don’t have an opt-out.
- We are limited in our ability to freely travel throughout the United States where states are denying entry for those with out-of-state license plates running amok of our interstate rights.
- Gun stores have been deemed nonessential. Liquor and weed stores are okay. But God forbid you want to exercise your Second Amendment right to purchase and own a firearm during a crisis, you are not allowed, even as the government usurps more power and authority, and as they are emptying jails and releasing more prisoners in society. So, as the threat against innocent Americans increase, if you don’t already own a firearm, too bad.
We are also seeing the elected officials seem to forget who really is supposed to have the power and that’s We the People. The President and governors are in a dispute over who has the right to reopen the government. The President says that he has total authority over the States and the states are pushing back. I explained the idea of federalism before.
But here is the truth. The President does not have total authority over the states, and the governors and states cannot put in policies that conflict with the federal government and limited the rights of the people.
We have Article 6 of the Constitution. That’s the supremacy clause where states are not allowed to introduce and implement policies that are in conflict with federal authority and the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. At the same time, we have the 10th Amendment where any power not delegated to the federal government, are left up to the states to decide.
You have a bunch of governors who seem to believe they have total authority over their states, and the people, and you have a President who believes he can dictate to the states what to do. As far as reopening, it is the federal government that regulates commerce and can order the opening of businesses and trade. It is the state governments that can determine when to reopen schools, state government departments, and agencies, local businesses such as bars, restaurants, dry cleaners, hair salons, etc.
However, when we discuss who has the power to reopen what, we are losing sight of the most important aspect of this whole crisis. It’s the fact that we freely and blindly allowed government to usurp our authority without raising questions or providing pushback.
Now maybe the lockdown measures were necessary. Perhaps the limiting of our guaranteed Constitutional protections did save lives. However, that doesn’t make it any more comforting. It doesn’t make it any more justifiable, and it doesn’t make it any less frightening.
This should scare the hell out of each and every one of you out there. But what’s even more frightening is the fact they did this without any debate. They did this without any input from the people. They did this without any pushback from the press. In fact, some in the press want the government to go even further.
And the worst of all is how we just accept it as a bunch of lemmings. We have people saying that public health is more important, and government must do what it takes to prevent the spread. We have neighbors calling the police on each other as if “Stasi” is going to come around and whisk violators away.
Now, I understand people saying that the coronavirus is not about liberty or rights, it’s about saving lives. I had another comment on the post that said, “The hell with the Constitution. Health and safety are needed, otherwise what good is it.”
I find this extremely alarming, and it illustrates our lack of appreciation for our rights. In fact, “We the People” didn’t provide any pushback against this. Regardless of how you feel about the virus or the lockdowns, we should be holding government accountable. The constitution doesn’t go away because we may be scared. This whole crisis illustrates how quickly government can usurp our rights and authority, and like lemmings, we will try and shame anyone that dares to question the actions and powers of government.
Even if you agree with the lockdowns, shouldn’t we be asking how and when is power going to be restored to the people? Shouldn’t we be asking what are the triggers to allow us to begin to reopen the country? Shouldn’t we be asking, why state legislative bodies aren’t more involved in these decisions, especially considering they are the representative bodies? Shouldn’t we be asking if we really want to grant these executives such extraordinary powers even if it may be in the public’s interest?
Sadly, we don’t ask these questions, and we are not holding these people accountable. We also have a useless press that actually wants the government to have more power, and they don’t ask these tough questions.
In fact, we have Governor Cuomo say that out of this will come a “new normal.” Well, what the hell does that mean? Not one journalist asked him what he meant by a new normal. We had the governor of New Jersey say that things may be locked down until September, yet he wasn’t challenged by any journalist asking why that may be. What metric is he looking at to make that determination? Others have stated that we may see a second wave over the summer or at the end of the year. Does that mean government will be locking us down again in the name of public health?
You as the American people, no matter how you feel about the lockdown, wouldn’t you want to know the answers to these questions?
Are we really going to say the Constitution only applies during normal times when no crisis exists, and if so, what good is a constitution? Doesn’t the Constitution mean something or not? Are we really willing to risk killing the Constitution for fear of a virus?
Beware of history
History has proven that when the government is granted more powers, they are rarely returned to the people. Take the Great Depression. The Great Depression dramatically increased the power of the federal government. It created a system of new federalism, where we have two levels of government that are supposed to be independent of each other, but one is reliant on the other.
Because of the powers that were granted to the federal government, States have grown reliant on the federal government. This dependency has usurped state authority to develop its own policies.
We saw it after 9/11 with the Patriot Act. Remember, the Patriot Act was only supposed to exist to combat terrorism. Yet, it dropped the standard of probable cause and adopted a lower standard of reasonable suspicion. We have had numerous people, who had nothing to do with terrorism, charged under the Patriot Act.
Now that we are so far removed from 9/11, you have a whole generation of children who will never know what it was like to live in a pre-9/11 America. Think to yourself, after the 9/11 crisis, nothing was the same. Our system changed. We changed. We granted government more authority in the name of security. We have accepted the idea that government can spy on its own people, and if you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t worry.
And think of it this way- we are hearing a lot of talk about a new normal due to the coronavirus. Deadly pandemics are extremely rare. Are we willing to change our life forever, to give up some of our liberties for these rare events? I’m not concerned about government power during the crisis. What concerns me is the power they have when the crisis is over.
You see how things change during times of crisis. And it’s not like government ever fully returns the power to the people. In fact, governors and the President have become stronger throughout the years. Every President since FDR, with the exception of Eisenhower, expanded their powers and the power of the Executive branch. It didn’t matter whether they were Republicans or Democrats.
Pandemics are actually rare occurrences. In fact, there have been about 20 pandemics over the course of 3,000 years of recorded history. Do we really want to change our way of life for an occurrence that is extraordinarily rare? Is it worth throwing away the Constitution for something that may occur every couple of hundred years?
This is not about politics, partisanship or political parties. It’s about America.
Closing
All this is being done in the name of saving lives. I’ve been sitting home for nearly 5-weeks, and while I have the luxuries of television, the internet, the computer and a nice backyard, this is not living. This is not life. I can’t imagine what living under a totalitarian regime would be like, and we aren’t even close to that, but without having freedom, you don’t have a life to live.
Also, I’m here to clue you in on something. It’s not really about saving lives. I can use that argument to justify granting government extraordinary power.
Take this hypothetical, now I know it’s different, yet just go with it for a minute. China places a nuclear bomb in New York City and Los Angeles. They have an additional 13 nuclear bombs ready to fire from the Mainland. Estimates are that it would instantly kill 13-15 million people, and several more millions in the years to come due to the fallout. China demands that America surrenders to its will allow China to become the dominant power.
I get that it is a far-fetched hypothetical, but would you be willing to agree to their demands in the name of saving lives? Most would say that we would be nuts to do that, and rightly so. But, if we say curtailing our liberty because people will die, is it really that nuts? I mean far more people would die under a nuclear attack than a virus.
Fear and the argument of preventing death shouldn’t always be the main drivers. When we look at it there are far more preventable deaths than this virus, yet we don’t change our way of life. We need to understand a free society comes with risks. Life comes with risks, and we learn to live with those risks.
You have a far greater chance of dying in a car accident than you do from getting the coronavirus. Are you going to stop driving? Should government ban cars? According to the National Institute of Health, 88,000 people die each year from alcohol-related deaths. In the name of saving lives, shouldn’t we ban alcohol? 73,000 a year will die from drug overdoses, and the number would be significantly higher if there was no Narcan. Why don’t we cover that by endless news segments? Each year, 480,000 people die from smoking-related deaths. In the name of saving lives, why don’t we ban tobacco? Obesity-related deaths total 300,000 each year? Should government be in charge of our diets?
Of course, there will be those who say, “well that’s different. Those people are doing it to themselves,” with the exception of the automobile because you don’t have power over other drivers. Well, that’s not exactly true, those that die from obesity or smoking-related deaths can become a burden on the system. It impacts all taxpayers. It impacts family members. It has societal, community and economic impacts. It would be in the public interest to prevent obesity or smoking. So, if you are making the priority about life and public health, then shouldn’t the government try to save all lives? Why do we only take extreme measures for the rare pandemic event? Grant government full control over our lives.
We are at a crossroads as to what direction this country goes in. I know many are scared out there, but we cannot let fear drive us to undo everything we have fought so hard for. We cannot let fear undo everything that millions of Americans died or were injured for. We take the concept of liberty for granted, and we need to wake up, appreciate that we have a Constitution designed to protect our natural God-given rights. That government is the one that is supposed to protect and ensure we can exercise these rights in a free society.
However, this crisis illustrates how quickly we can lose our freedom and liberties, and once lost, tyranny is not far behind. As it says in the Declaration of Independence, “all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
Ironically, we have local governments around the country canceling Fourth of July events. It will certainly be weird if these lockdowns persist into the summer and social restrictions are still in place, yet at the same time, we celebrate the Fourth of July, the Declaration of independence, and the concept of liberty and freedom.
We are supposed to be different than all previous nations throughout history. We live in the greatest country in the world. We are the one country that truly values the Constitution. We are a country that values the concept of liberty and freedom. If Americans begin to reject these concepts out of fear, then we are no longer a unique nation. Then there is nothing special or remarkable about us. Then it is game over and we will live through some dark times.
Remember what John Adams said, “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” It is our job to ensure we hold government accountable. To ensure future generations have the same rights and freedoms we enjoyed. We have to get the message out. We must reawaken the people as to what America is all about and why the concept of liberty is so important. We have to reignite the American spirit.
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