“The same officials who tell us to keep our kids at home; who tell us to not pray in church, as we have always prayed; who limit our places of work and livelihood look the other way, often with approval, as hooligans tear apart our cities.”
Pandemic v. Protestors
OPINION By Star Parker
July 29, 2020
Decent Americans who are feeling perplexed today shouldn’t be ashamed about it. There is good reason to be perplexed.
On the one hand, in the name of health and safety, we are being asked by government to compromise personal freedoms that we have always taken for granted: going to work, going to church, sending our children off to school, meeting our friends in our favorite restaurant.
We walk around wearing annoying masks and try to respect social distancing limits.
But decent Americans are perplexed because we would expect that allowing more government into our personal space would happen uniformly, that in allowing more government, we are all sacrificing together for some greater good, some greater necessity.
But instead, we look around and see chaos. We see no uniformity.
Protests, often violent, are sweeping our cities. The same public officials who tell us to keep our kids at home; who tell us to not pray in church, as we have always prayed; who limit our places of work and livelihood look the other way, often with approval, as hooligans tear apart our cities.
Greater demands from government should mean increasing respect for the law.
But we’re seeing the opposite: government making more demands while disrespect for the law increases across the nation.
We just saw a decision in the nation’s Supreme Court where a Nevada church petition to be treated equally to Nevada’s casinos regarding COVID-19 attendance limits was rejected with no explanation.
Justice Samuel Alito got to the heart of the matter in his dissenting opinion, saying:
“For months now, States and their subdivisions, have responded to the pandemic by imposing unprecedented restrictions on personal liberty, including free exercise of religion. … Now four months have passed since the original declaration. The problem is no longer one of exigency, but one of considered yet discriminatory treatment of places of worship … ” Read more.
