By Roger Mitchell, Stevensville
“I am blown away by all of the people using the line “I have a right to not wear a mask” or follow the protocol requested by the CDC, United States Government or the medical industry. “—Joan Prather
The key word in this phrase is not “right” as some might think, but “requested.” To request is to ask and run the risk that those you ask may not respond as you wish them to. If you ask people to wear a mask because you believe something to be true, you must accept that they might not act in the way you want them to.
US government at the federal level is, according to the Constitution, split three ways: legislative, administrative, and judicial. The legislative branch enacts the law. The administration manages the law. The judiciary reviews the law to make sure it conforms to the Constitution. (At least that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Whether it does or not is debatable.) The various state governments follow the same pattern.
What this means, from a Constitutional point of view, is that a president or a governor cannot simply issue an “Executive Order” and force everyone else to obey it. Neither the president nor the governors have that authority. Instead, any law which required that everyone wear a mask MUST originate from the legislative body AND then be signed into law by the executive. To date, there have been no such laws at either the federal or state levels, which means that no one in America is legally and constitutionally obligated to wear a face mask.
The people who claim a “right” are wrong. They really should be proclaiming instead that they are FREE to choose to wear or not wear a mask. “Rights” are too often confused with privileges, as Prather has mentioned and in this she is absolutely correct. Freedom, however, is not granted as a privilege, but is inherent to the individual. No one has the moral authority to infringe on an individual’s FREEDOM to make a personal choice about the wearing of a mask. As the mantra goes (and I wield it offensively), “My body, my choice!”
Here’s where the rubber meets the road. If the governor, the CDC, and the medical industry ASK us to wear a mask, they are giving us a choice. We can cooperate or not, however we decide and there is nothing anyone can do about it, except to try to use moral argument to persuade us otherwise. If those agencies do not ask, but DEMAND that we comply, then they are out of bounds constitutionally and breaking the law, which means that we do not have to follow their orders. Martin Luther King said that, “If a law is unjust, it deserves to be broken.” If a law is unconstitutional and law-breaking, then it is unjust and it should be ignored, disobeyed, and disrespected, even mocked.
This is sufficient…for now. I will save the issue of guilt-inducement and emotional manipulation for another time.