In Brief: Have Americans Surrendered Their Liberties?
It’s the Bill of Rights’ 230th anniversary, and people have lost many of their rights.
Today is the 230th anniversary of the signing of the Bill of Rights. Presidential historian Jane Hampton Cook rightly wonders what’s happened to those rights.
President Franklin Roosevelt, who designated Bill of Rights Day on December 15, believed nothing could make us yield our rights.
“What we face is nothing more nor less than an attempt to overthrow and to cancel out the great upsurge of human liberty of which the American Bill of Rights is the fundamental document,” Roosevelt passionately declared on the Bill of Rights’ 150th anniversary, which was eight days after the Japanese military attacked the U.S. military at Pearl Harbor on that infamous day, December 7, 1941.
Under totalitarianism, Roosevelt explained “the individual human has no right by virtue of his humanity, no right to a soul, a mind, a tongue or a trade of his own or to live where he pleases.” He added that “his duty is one of obedience only to Adolf Hitler.”
In contrast, President Roosevelt boldly declared: “No threat or danger can make us yield our freedom guaranteed in the Bill of Rights.”
Roosevelt was wrong. Though Hitler and Benito Mussolini couldn’t make us surrender our Bill of Rights, the fear of COVID-19 did.
“There comes a time when you do have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision for the greater good of society,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden’s chief medical advisor, audaciously professed.
Fauci is wrong, especially about the greater good.
Nevertheless, Fauci holds great sway over public policy around the nation — and the resulting loss of liberty can often be traced to his pronouncements.
“[Fauci] has casual disdain for the Bill of Rights and your liberty,” Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) decried. … “We have got a real problem, an authoritarian who also doesn’t obey the science,” Paul said. “This is a recipe for totalitarianism. It’s a recipe for something we don’t want in our country.”
Others are taking up the same call, rejecting rule by bureaucratic fiat, in large part she says because “COVID-19 policies clearly cost Americans their rights, and many of them, their lives.”
This year Americans can honor the Bill of Rights’ 230th anniversary by having the courage to say no to totalitarianism and fear and yes to their rights. Americans must tolerate each other’s vaccine decisions. They must demand early treatment options for COVID-19, Fauci’s removal, and an investigation into the federal medical bureaucracy.
