By CHRISTOPHER MANION
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, a pediatrician, exudes a genial bedside manner as he advocates infanticide, winks at his blackface past, and commandeers the churches of the Commonwealth.
“I represent 8.5 million Virginians as governor of this great Commonwealth,” he says. “That’s who I’m focused on when I come to work every day, and that’s why I will continue to do everything I can to keep people safe.”
Northam doesn’t define “safe”; and yet, the term longs for a definition. After all, the governor employs it to defend the extraordinary powers he has assumed in order to enforce his statewide lockdown.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “to define” means “to set limits.” A word means this, and not that. Northam calmly breezes by that rude intrusion of reality as he careens through the countryside wielding destruction — of enterprises, of livelihoods, and, yes, of the fundamental rights of Virginians.
But wait – the governor neglects the fact that he too is governed. He doesn’t have to define “safe” — the Constitution of Virginia does it for him. In fact, it begins with the very language that Thomas Jefferson drew upon when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Here is the language of Section 1:
“Equality and rights of men. That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
On whom does the Constitution confer the right to pursue safety? It is free Virginians, not the governor, who possess that inherent right, so precious that neither they nor their elected representatives can relinquish it. The duty to respect this fundamental freedom is as binding on Gov. Northam as it was on Patrick Henry when he assumed the governor’s office on July 5, 1776, and on Thomas Jefferson, who succeeded him in 1779.
Like several other Democrat state governors, Northam points to the Wuhan Virus as the source of his unprecedented powers. We note that he not only claims for himself the right to “obtain happiness and safety” for Virginians, he also blatantly defies the constitution’s guarantee of their “means of acquiring and possessing property.” His arbitrary lockdown has destroyed untold thousands of businesses, jobs, and livelihoods of Virginians, yet he assures them that he’s keeping them “safe.”
Bad Times And Bad Habits
Virginia is not the only state in which secular saviors seize our rights on the pretext that they will rescue us from this tumultuous sea of fear. Abraham Scarr, the director of Illinois PIRG, a left-wing activist group, is “disappointed” that the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board advocates only “containing” the virus. “Defeating the virus has to be the only goal,” he writes. Yet, Illinois, like Virginia, has a constitution, and it too has a Bill of Rights that limits the power of the government:
“All men are by nature free and independent and have certain inherent and inalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To secure these rights and the protection of property, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Rather than protecting the property and livelihoods of thousands of Illinoisans, Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s lockdown has destroyed them. But the always perceptive Chicago attorney Joseph Morris focuses on Scarr’s insistence that defeating the virus should be “humanity’s only goal.”
According to Scarr, Morris tells The Wanderer, “all other goals — freedom, faith, family, justice, prosperity, education, art, charity, and even attention to other health needs — must be subordinated to ‘defeating the virus.’
“Naturally, if ‘defeating the virus’ is ‘the only goal,’ then surrender of all liberty and autonomy to the instrumentality at the vanguard of ‘defeating the virus’ — government, controlled not by popular will but by politicians in office who need be accountable only to the evolving guesses and predictions of ‘scientists’ — necessarily follows.
“Habituating Americans to subordinating everything else to one goal selected by people in power is good training for ensuring ongoing docility and subordination once . . . the current pandemic (a crisis too good to be wasted) can safely be declared over.”
We learn from Aristotle that good habits are very hard to acquire and easy to break. Bad habits, on the other hand, are easy to acquire and hard to break. Today we are confronted with politicians who have acquired very bad habits. Democrat governors throughout America have taken the lead in testing the constitutional limits on their powers defined in their founding documents. Experience teaches us that the virtuous habits of a free people require eternal vigilance. Only vigilant citizens can bring them to heel, and we aren’t doing a very good job of it.
This bodes ill for the citizens of Virginia. Consider: Section 13 of Virginia’s Constitution guarantees what Northam wants to curtail: “That a well-regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Gov. Northam has long advocated severe restrictions of the rights guaranteed in Section 13. Last November, thousands of Virginians demonstrated peacefully throughout the Commonwealth defending those rights. Has Gov. Northam tamed their enthusiasm for freedom, wielding fear as his weapon of choice?
Freedom Turned
Upside Down
Throughout the country, many of those in power are testing us. And the Church has not been exempt. In Virginia, our bishops have apparently agreed with the governor’s timetable regarding the recommencement of religious services. But many have viewed their agreement as acquiescence — implying that the state, not the Church, possesses the legitimate authority to regulate the faithful’s access to the sacramental life of the Church. This deference, made in good faith, to be sure, might well invite the governor, and the public, to believe that civil authorities do indeed have the right to prevent our attendance at Holy Mass until they give us permission to return.
The crisis demands clarity. Caesar has no power from God over the sacraments. Nothing is more important than the Mass. If we concede to Caesar the power to loosen or to bind the faithful regarding the Mass, we will have no defense when he binds us to anything else.
As Mr. Morris observes above, acquiescence in such circumstances constitutes “good training for ensuring ongoing docility and subordination” to other arbitrary mandates, once the current unpleasantness subsides.
Our bishops are not alone. The lockdown has imposed not only religious burdens, but harsh economic and social harm as well. Yet it is a rare small businessman who will defy orders and dare to reopen. To do so is to risk penalties and even arrest. If a mugger robs us on the street, he’ll go to jail. But now Virginia’s world is turned upside down. The governor tells us, “You go to work to earn a living and feed your family and I’ll put you in jail.”
As the number of furloughs and bankruptcies rises, those dependent on government and its programs will increase. Many will be desperate enough to shrug and put up with whatever government handouts they can get. This is what big government wants. Independence fades, dependency rules. And once dependency is gained, big government does not want to give up that power to independent people who might regain their independence through good habits of self-reliance and initiative.
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