There Is No ‘Emergency’ Exemption from the Constitution

One of the more disturbing revelations that has come about during the pandemic panic in America is just how easily American citizens have accepted the violations of personal liberty that were deemed unacceptable by our founders. The preservation of individual liberty is the largest reason the Constitution was drafted as a document.

That is, the purpose of the Constitution is to ensure the maximum amount of individual freedom within very limited boundaries enforced by governmental authorities.

In order to accomplish this precarious balance between individual liberty and government power in the clearest manner, the Bill of Rights was adopted as the first 10 Amendments to the Consitution. These amendments were insisted upon by certain of the founders known as ‘Anti-federalists’ who,

demanded a series of amendments to the U.S. Constitution to protect individual liberties.

The original Constitution and Bill of Rights make up the core of what our governmental system was created to accomplish. Most of the other amendments that have been added have built upon this foundation to enhance individual liberty within a peaceful and secure society.

This document declares what is supposed to be the ‘supreme law of the land’ in America. Furthermore, America is also supposed to be a land governed by the law.

However, we have witnessed in the past two years numerous instances in which unelected government authorities using the rubric of a never-ending public health “emergency” have openly violated the rights of Americans that are constitutionally guaranteed. These violations have been blatant, oppressive, and destructive, as if these tyrants believe they have some sort of ‘medical exemption’ from the supreme law of our land.

‘Emergencies’ do not make our rights evaporate

I have been directly involved in just one true public emergency during my lifetime. That happened when a tornado struck the very small town where I served as pastor at First Baptist Church in Raritan, Illinois in 1995.

The tornado was an F4 and damaged and destroyed many homes on the southeast side of the community. Here is one account of the destruction.

The tornado then clipped the southeast corner of Raritan where damage was occurred along and south of Main Street. The Carl Huss home was totally destroyed while he was in the basement. Mr. Huss received a large bruise on his back when cement blocks were pulled in from the west side of the basement as the home was shredded off its foundation.

What this account doesn’t mention is that Mr. Huss was hit on his back because he shielded his wife and children from the cement blocks. I know that because I and two others saw him and helped him and his family climb out when we went to look for people after the tornado had passed.

The basement was all that remained of the Huss home, and many others were destroyed completely or damaged beyond repair. The parsonage in which my family and I lived was spared major damage even though the edges of the tornado roared through our own backyard.

The community pulled together and with the help of many others from surrounding towns in the next few weeks successfully came through our own public emergency. I am pleased to report that during all of that time, it never occurred to anyone that people should be censored, or be disarmed, or be denied due process of law.

As expected in a small rural community, there was minimal government aid rendered to us, though the state of Illinois sent help in the form of prisoners from the Galesburg prison to facilitate cleanup of the rubble in town and the surrounding farms. However, it was our church fellowship that supplied meals for them, not the government.

It is my conviction that this kind of example of handling a public emergency produces both the best results and honors the constitutional guarantee of individual rights and freedom. There are some who might argue that this was a natural disaster of limited scope in a sparsely populated area and therefore, this kind of recovery model would not be workable on a larger scale.

The assumption is that when a large, perhaps nationwide public emergency exists, the government is the single entity that has the resources to handle the situation successfully. However, when we examine how this has worked in the case of the national “public health emergency” of COVID, we find that, if anything, government involvement has only made the situation worse.

Constitutional vs. unconstitutional responses to COVID

When COVID-19 arrived in the United States, there were basically two responses within the nation. One response recognized that even though this had been declared a public health ’emergency,’ that didn’t mean the Constitution could be thrown out of the window.

The second response, embraced by the ‘blue’ states in America, decided that the Constitution didn’t apply. Thus they enacted and enforced through executive orders lockdowns, mask, and vaxx mandates, each of which violated the individual rights of their citizens.

Which of these responses was the best concerning this national “emergency?” There are two good candidates among the states to use as a representative comparison of constitutional versus unconstitutional COVID response, Florida and New York. These states have similar size populations but have approached COVID-19 far differently.

Under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has, for the majority of the pandemic panic, refused to panic and remained open with little or no statewide mandates of any kind. Conversely, New York, under former Governor Andrew Cuomo and now with Governor Kathy Hockel responded with some of the harshest COVID restrictions in the world.

Deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Florida and New York, according to statistics from February 3, 2022, are as follows:

Florida has a mortality rate of 304 per 100,000 people, while New York’s rate is 335 per 100,000 people.

Clearly, mandating masking, lockdowns, and the jab did not help New York’s population against the ravages of COVID-19. What these measures did was unconstitutionally restrict breathing, close businesses, force people to remain at home, and violate the bodily integrity of its citizens.

Why are these kinds of measures unconstitutional? The big reason is that they are essentially punitive measures forced through executive action without the vote of the legislature and without the due process of law.

The essence of this is that a declaration of an emergency, of any kind, does not grant constitutional authority to a governor or even a president to force actions that go against conscience or will. The only exemptions to this are with the guarantee that there is the “due process of law” which requires that actual laws are violated.

Executive mandates are not law, and thus, even in emergencies, they cannot be constitutionally enforced. Moreover, this means that law enforcement officers and the military should not be tasked with enforcing mandates and, if they are ordered to do, so they should consider that an unlawful order and refuse to obey it.

However, in America, we have largely ignored this fact and witnessed many instances of law enforcement obeying unconstitutional and therefore, unlawful orders during the pandemic panic. Perhaps the most egregious example happened last month at a Porterville, California city council meeting when a 76-year-old woman was arrested because her mask had fallen below her nose!

Thankfully the woman was released without charges soon afterward. However, this occurred at a public meeting and she was not in violation of any laws whatsoever and should never have been arrested in the first place.

This is further evidence confirming a quote that I found thanks to following Steven M. Legacy on GETTR:

“If you let the government take your rights during an emergency, the government will create emergencies In order to take your rights.”

The real plague here is a plague of power-hungry government officials, many of whom, like Dr. Fauchi, are unelected and believe they are also unaccountable. It is long past time these unlawful actions be called out as such at local, state, and national levels.

These kinds of abuses violate our basic God-given and constitutionally guaranteed rights as citizens or legal residents of the United States and thus must be treated as violations of God’s law.

As the apostle Peter stated to law enforcement about 2,000 years ago,