i so agree..i was also thinking of patrick henry and butch patrick.

you sure get a full picture of character and humanity in a crisis.

it is alarming and very sad when one comes to realize it but we do have a huge chunk of dumb selfish paranoid people in this country
and they are not going away.......

Posted by dino27 on 4/20/2020 12:35:00 AM (view original):

Posted by dahsdebater on 4/20/2020 12:23:00 AM (view original):
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Benjamin Franklin

ben franklin was a scientist and a community organizer...a great man and great american.
a shame a person as bright as you are would twist his words and take them wildly out of context.
sad.
people inside and listening to their govts are not abdicating freedom any more then anyone who abides by the millions of laws we have throughout the country.

whats wrong with your common sense.....you should not waste your talent ...you have a very bright mind.
does hsdebater stand for high school debater

I don't think it's wildly out of context. Franklin was arguing that even a real concern for protecting innocent lives did not justify an illegal tax. I'm arguing that even a real concern for protecting innocent lives does not justify an illegal ban on peaceful assembly.

The next line is just, frankly, poorly though out. I shouldn't need to make the reductio ad absurdum argument for you to see how stupid it is to say "if you follow lots of laws, you should just follow all of them." Suffice it to say that within this logic, MLK was a very bad guy. He incited millions of people who followed lots of laws to go out and protest against what he perceived to be a handful of unconstitutional laws, at the cost of lives. Obviously those people should have just stayed home and listened to their governments. Right?

Clearly not all laws are created equal. The laws we obey we generally take to be lawful and acceptable. Any ban on free peaceful association is unlawful under the First Amendment. You practically made this argument for me. You pointed out an instance from the past week where peaceful protesters were, under the auspices of a stay at home order, forced to disperse. But the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that peaceful protest is protected under the First Amendment. So any order banning all peaceful protest ipso facto violates the First Amendment. Even if you want to follow the narrow interpretation of freedom of assembly as being subservient to freedom of petition, it is well established that peaceful protest falls under assembly for purposes of petition. So at the very least, any law banning peaceful protest is clearly not acceptable.

Ultimately, this comes down to an argument I'm willing to bet you've made plenty of times in the past - you can't legislate your morals. It's not legal to restrict other people's Constitutional freedoms based on your interpretation of right and wrong. It doesn't matter that in this instance the stay at home order feels right. It is inherently unacceptable and problematic that we not only have laws that clearly violate the Constitution, but that by their very nature they prohibit protest against themselves. And that at the same time the courts have all been closed, largely by the same people instituting the illegal orders, so they can't be challenged legally. It's an unacceptable loophole.

I think your disagreement with me is very much analogous to the phenomenon of getting upset when a person who seems clearly guilty of a crime is "let go" on a technicality. These technicalities all exist for reasons. The greater harm comes when the government starts taking rights and freedoms without just cause. To close as many loopholes as possible for the government to cause harm in this way, we require that certain standards be met in the investigation and prosecution of crimes. So yes, some guilty people go free. That's the cost of preserving our freedom. Similarly here, the lack of opportunity to lawfully prevent assembly, even when it's "good for society," is simply the cost of ensuring that governments don't have the ability to take away certain freedoms for less savory reasons.

Every state of the country is under national emergency. Every governor of every state as well as the president has the power to restrict freedoms under certain circumstances. The president has not but could issue Marshall law. I the governors absolutely have the right to restrict certain freedoms when there is an extreme medical emergency . There is the compelling reason to do so making it constitutional.

So yes, you are saying MLK was a bad guy? Because the laws were the laws and he should have just followed them?

trump did not cut off europe until march 11 and he excluded the UK.
most of the cases in the united states have come from europe not china.

thats a fact...in new york they have determined that the virus in most people has a european origin.

thats a fact jacque.

Posted by dino27 on 4/20/2020 7:07:00 PM (view original):

I’m talking about today. I’m talking about governors having a constitutional right to tell people to stay in their houses during a pandemic. The state constitution in every state gives them that power.

There is no constitutional issue about the power of the governors.

With regard to those who are protesting, if they are doing so in a way that defies the public orders from the governors that they are violating the law. They are not violating a law for For a higher purpose.

These protesters are not seeking a universally held civil rights which they are being discriminated against from receiving. Martin Luther King was involved in peaceful assembly and some civil disobedience during a time when public assembly itself was allowed. Sometimes he went to jail for breaking rules of civil disobedience but it was for a civil rights purpose. Eventually he won.

This is not about civil rights. This is about breaking the law during a pandemic. Issues do not exist in a Vacuum in a real world.

State constitutions can't overrule the First Amendment, or any other part of the Federal Constitution. So no, no state's constitution allows the governor to restrict the right to peaceful protest. That's a Federally-protected freedom.

You keep appealing to authority. That's meaningless. And also a product of your liberal news bubble. I've seen multiple articles in the WSJ discussing the Constitutionality issues associated with stay-at-home orders, and at least one in Forbes. It's not something that nobody's talking about, just nobody you're listening to.

Most importantly, your last line. That's the ENTIRE POINT, which you're somehow missing. Issues do not exist in a vacuum. You don't get to handle the current crisis while ignoring the law of the land and the threat of undermining the basic liberties guaranteed in our governing document. Coronavirus ISN'T the only thing in the world right now. So no, you don't get to trash the first amendment to respond to it. Precisely because this one issue doesn't exist in a vacuum. And it IS about civil rights. If you allow a law that violates fundamental civil rights guaranteed in the first amendment to stand, then IT IS ABOUT CIVIL RIGHTS. Ignoring that is completely putting this one issue in a vacuum.

you do not understand the law.
there is no legal issue...you think there should be one.
but there is no - legal - issue.

you should take a breath ...be thankful for your health.
read the news...see the stats in the various states and watch the growth over time.
it is scary..at least 45000 deaths in less then 2 months already.
watch the numbers over the next 2 weeks esp georgia and nebraska and louisiana.

this is an evolving thing bigger then anything in our lifetimes...and we dont have a smart or mature person as the leader.
worry about what is happening and later read about the law.
laws can be changed but we are working now under a set of well established laws for societal emergencies.

so to be clear -

1. lockdowns in a pandemic - legal
2. right to complain and freedom of speech - legal
3. right to assemble even to protest if it breaks the guidelines and rules of the lock down because of lack of masks and numbers of people and social distancing issues - could be illegal
4. corned beef on white bread with mayo - illegal

The scientific community is now saying that there will be a brand new fresh wave of coronavirus starting in October that will coincide with the traditional flu season causing an overwhelming burden with the medical system. The new wave could continue until May and who knows whether or not it is going to be a continuing process.. The need the need for widespread testing is imperative and the need for medicine and vaccine is existential.