Protestors Rally At Michigan State Capitol Against Shelter-In-Place Orders
(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
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Our rights are important.   They may be the most important thing we have.   They are and have been what makes America a different place than every other country.  America is a place where people are the most free and where anybody can accomplish just about anything.  It’s for the protection of these rights that American soldiers have given their lives.  Yes, we weigh the rights of the many versus those of the few, but we’ve always done that with a frame of mind to protect the rights of individuals, when at all possible.   Those are tough decisions, and for most of our 243 years, we’ve left those decisions to the courts.

Almost 20 years ago, our elected representatives in Congress hastily passed the Patriot Act, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.  At least that draconian action was made by the men and women whom we elected to make laws.  Today, in Michigan, the people we elected to make laws have no say.  During the COVID-19 pandemic, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has taken absolute power over every life in Michigan, and rendered our elected law-makers powerless.  She has done so by citing one small portion of Michigan Law, with complete disregard to the whole of Michigan law.   So far, our judicial system hasn’t really weighed in.  We hope they will soon, as they have done now in other states.

Puzzling to many of us who revere our constitutional rights as Americans is the mysterious silence of our state’s lawyers.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has always and continues to condemn the Patriot Act.  The reason is stated on their website.

“…. for making it easier for the government to spy on ordinary Americans by expanding the authority to monitor phone and email communications, collect bank and credit reporting records, and track the activity of innocent Americans on the Internet. While most Americans think it was created to catch terrorists, the Patriot Act actually turns regular citizens into suspects.”

So, where is the ACLU today?   They’re asking for money to support efforts to get prisoners out of jails, while our government threatens to incarcerate and destroy regular citizens for trying to save their homes and businesses.  A person in Texas cutting someone’s hair is put in jail, and exposed to COVID-19, and the ACLU wants to let people actually convicted of a crime out for their safety.  Here’s the first thing you’ll see at the ACLU’s website.

“Your gift will fund our critical work to protect voting rights, demand that vulnerable people in prisons, jails and immigration detention centers be released, and fight to ensure reproductive health care remains open and accessible to all who need it. Now more than ever, we the people means all of us.”

At a time where people in pain can’t get their knee or hip fixed, the ACLU and Governor Whitmer are hell-bent to make sure abortions are still performed.  While the people that we voted to make our laws can no longer do that, the ACLU and Governor Whitmer are more concerned with making sure that voters won’t have to get off their couch to cast their votes, presumably for their left-wing colleagues and candidates.

While the people of Michigan can’t get a haircut, they can still buy marijuana.  While thousands of small business owners see their shops closed, we can still go to a convenience store and buy state lottery tickets.

In a time like this, tough decisions need to be made in balancing the needs of the many versus the needs of the few.  More of us would be on board with those decisions, if we didn’t think there was a political agenda behind it.  With each passing day, it becomes more and more clear to us that that’s the case.  Governor Whitmer doesn’t just have her finger on the scale of justice.  She’s thrown the scale in the trash dumpster.

Protesters at the Capital in Lansing

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