THE STAGGERING STUPIDITY OF WHITE SUBURBAN BIDEN VOTERS

     The proliferation of blue-white Biden-Harris signs on the prim lawns of $750,000 Fairfax County homes proclaims the staggering stupidity of their affluent white owners.  Some of these suburban sycophants, moreover, are determined to remove all doubt as to their self-destructive derangement by posting additional signs declaring their fawning solidarity with the so-called "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) movement -- which emphatically condemns as racism any ameliorating concession that White Lives (such as the lives of the feckless sign-posters' own white children) also matter.

     In this Northern Virginia suburb and in similar coastal American suburbs, millions of currently comfortable white suburbanites, and especially those of the notorious liberal "soccer mom" variety, are determined to engage in the equivalent of class and ethnic suicide by voting for a Democratic ticket that is openly and emphatically hostile to their interests and, more particularly, the interests of their own children.

                                                                         

                    Suburban Biden Voters:  "Clueless" as the Valley Girls           

     Although there are many issues on which the Biden-Harris ticket has staked out positions hostile to middle-class suburbanites -- like higher taxes and abolition of private health insurance options -- the 2020 Democrats have been especially radical in their advocacy of policies on race and law enforcement that are harmful to all Americans, but especially to white suburbanites.  Yet millions of these electoral sheep seem prepared to empower the very forces that are determined to shatter the quality of their own families' lives.

     An especially striking proof of the Democrats' abject subordination to the primacy of prejudicial racial preference in their policies and programs came at the very outset of Joe Biden's presidential campaign.  He openly and proudly declared that his choice of a vice-presidential candidate would be limited to black females.  The deliberate limitation of the prospects for a party's vice-presidential candidate (a person who could easily become President, especially in the case of a doddering geriatric Presidential candidate like Biden) to members of a specified race is outrageously ill-considered and -- well, racist.  Yet such a limitation surprised no one, because the Democrats' and Mr. Biden's subordination to the pressures of racialist radicals was so well known that it was taken for granted.

     Biden's selection of the ultra-radical Kamala Harris (see SR's post on Harris's radical racialism here) as his vice-presidential candidate left no doubt where the Democrats were headed on race and law enforcement issues:  complete subordination to the destructive agenda of the BLM movement and other radical racialist and anti-law enforcement elements.  Harris, after all, has openly encouraged and endorsed the incendiary BLM/Antifa riots that she and her party are pleased to portray as "peaceful demonstrations."  To note that such a surrender to the interests of rioting radicals is inimical to the well-being of law-abiding suburbanites, of all races, is to merely state the obvious.

     The Democrats' divisive and destructive racial agenda begins with their unqualified embrace of the spurious canard of so-called "white privilege."  This is the very center piece of their radical racial policies.  The Democratic Party, including the Biden-Harris ticket, believes that all white Americans are the beneficiaries of this fictitious "white privilege" and are therefore obligated to accept the burdens of purported "remedial" policies in everything from employment to education to housing to entertainment and more.  The multi-millions of poor, lower-, and middle-class whites who have struggled for a decent living, often unsuccessfully, throughout the nation's history will be surprised to discover that their difficult and sometimes miserable lots are now portrayed as a "privileged" existence owing to their being white.

     One part of the Democrats' program to rectify "white privilege" is to obliterate prosperous and peaceful suburban neighborhoods as we know them.  That is why President Obama weaponized federal housing policy to impose race-based federal zoning preferences on suburban neighborhoods deemed insufficiently "diverse" by race-obsessed bureaucrats.  One aspect of these policies would be to force the construction of anomalous multi-family housing projects in the midst of green single-family neighborhoods.  President Trump has acted to nullify this destructive and unwarranted housing policy.  The Biden-Harris ticket, however, would not only maintain it, but intensify it on ideological steroids.  

     So suburban supporters of the Democrat ticket are effectively inviting the regulatory degradation of the very neighborhoods they have chosen to live in.  

     Another neighborhood issue for clueless suburban Biden voters to consider is related to the epidemic of BLM-Antifa riots in the past year, triggered by the misrepresentation of police measures that sometimes result in the injury or death of black (and white) criminal suspects and perpetrators.  Although most of these riots were focused on cities like Portland and Seattle, other violent riots spread to more suburban locales, like Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Further, riot leaders have overtly threatened to bring more of their violent actions into suburban neighborhoods.  Yet these are the very activists that Kamala Harris has warmly endorsed and encouraged.  How white, or black, suburban voters can reconcile voting for Biden-Harris with their own family interests is beyond rational comprehension.

     White suburbanites supporting the Biden-Harris ticket are also endorsing their obligation to pay so-called "reparations" for the Southern States' practice of slavery that was forcibly terminated through a Civil War in which hundreds of "privileged" white Union infantry soldiers gave their lives.  The reparations that Kamala Harris and the Democrats propose would, inter alia, transfer payments from entirely innocent lower- and middle-class whites to middle- and upper-class blacks who suffered nothing from slavery, but who have benefitted greatly from what is now over 50 years of affirmative action and other racial preferences.

     When asked back in 2019 whether she was for or against reparations, Harris initially responded that her feelings on the question were "complicated."  Anyone who interpreted that as a suggestion that Harris might have qualms about reparations, however, would be promptly disillusioned by the radical senator's explanation that the "complications" she referenced were based on her view that "mere" monetary reparations would not be sufficient, let alone unwarranted.  Rather, the Democrats' vice-presidential candidate said that "[F]rankly, I don't believe that writing a check is gonna be enough."  Instead, Harris envisions an open-ended program encompassing reparations for blacks in the fields of education, home ownership, health outcomes, and presumably any other area in which a government controlled by Democrat reparationists can act.

     How or why white suburbanites -- or, indeed, any reasonable American citizen -- would seek to elect a candidate who espouses such destructive, divisive, and grossly unjust policies lies beyond the realm of rational explanation.

     Suburban supporters of the Biden-Harris ticket are also endorsing the continued corruption of their children's education in what remains of their neighborhood public schools.  As part of their determination to "rectify" the shiboleth of white privilege, Democrats nationwide have sought to interject grossly distorted courses on "systemic racism" and the supposed flaws of our Founding Fathers into the required curriculum of our elementary, secondary, and college level schools.  Outrageously, this process has already begun, but the election of the Biden-Harris ticket would emphatically accelerate and intensify this distortion of our education system.  Instead of receiving a sound fundamental education in math, science, and genuine American history, children and young people will be relentlessly indoctrinated with the false notion that our nation's greatest founders and leaders, like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, were nothing more than incorrigible racists.

     One could continue indefinitely with the catalogue of Democrat policies that are patently inimical to the interests of suburban families and their children -- not to mention the Nation as a whole -- but time and space are limited.  But the catalogue would be remiss without noting the Democrats' continued and relentless commitment to racial and ethnic preferences, under the guise of affirmative action, in critical areas such as education, college admissions, employment, and promotion.  

     Although America's Constitution, laws, and general public opinion are all firmly committed to equal opportunity and nondiscrimination in all of these areas, the Democrats and their presidential ticket emphatically reject that sound and fair standard.  Instead, they demand the perpetual imposition of strict racial preferences without regard to whether those measures are needed to redress any actual discrimination.  That is why, as a prime example, universities throughout the nation continue to discriminate against white, and especially East Asian, applicants in their admissions policies, in complete disregard of the constitutional requirement for equal protection explained in authoritative Supreme Court decisions.  

     Significantly, Harvard University's egregious discrimination in favor of Blacks and Latinos, and against Asians and Whites, is presently being challenged in court by Asian students with the backing of the Trump Justice Department.  If elected, a Biden-Harris administration would not only withdraw support for this meritorious lawsuit, but undoubtedly encourage Harvard and all other colleges to continue discriminating against Asians and whites in the guise of affirmative action and "diversity" policies.  

     In short, suburban Biden supporters are voting for policies that will sacrifice their children's right to equal opportunity in seeking the college of their choice on the altars of white privilege reform and racial preference.

     Considering all the above and more, the motivation of white suburban voters in supporting the Biden-Harris ticket remains a profound mystery.  The election of that radical ticket would consign the children of these misguided voters to a dismal and disturbing future of subordinate status in the nation's policies and programs.

     

THE PARTY OF MALICE AND MADNESS: TODAY'S INDEFENSIBLE DEMOCRATS

     Almost four years ago, SR posted an article outlining what were then the most obscenely offensive positions and practices of the left-wing hate machine otherwise known as the Democratic Party.

     As but one example of the Democrats' toxic partisan venom, I described their vicious and mean-spirited attacks on Jackie Evancho, a charming and prodigiously talented16-year-old soprano.  The nasty vituperation against the apolitical and utterly inoffensive Ms. Evancho was motivated by nothing more than her acceptance of an invitation to sing at President Trump's forthcoming Inaugural Celebration, even though she had previously performed at President Obama's inauguration as well.

     The people and party who gratuitously denigrated an innocent teenage singer solely because she agreed to perform at a President's inaugural ceremony have not mellowed in the least in the ensuing three years.  Incredibly, the program of vicious partisan venom embraced by the Democrats in 2017 has since been exceeded in malice and madness by the Biden/Harris Democrats of today, who are inseparable from the Antifa and Black Lives Matters (BLM) terrorists who even now riot and pillage at will in many of America's cities with the encouragement and approval of the Democrat establishment.

                                                      

           America's Prospects under the Riot-loving Democrat Left         

     A harsh but inescapable truth needs to be brought home with unambiguous insistence as America faces an election of existential importance this November:  

     The Democratic Party has moved far beyond all bounds of basic reason, decency, and sanity in its unashamed embrace of political violence, anti-white racism, criminal immunity, judicial lawlessness, systematic media falsification, and governmental abrogation of the most basic individual liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.

     Taking into account the elements of political malice and madness pursued by the Democrat Left outlined below, it has simply become indefensible for any decent, reasonable, and self-respecting American to support and embrace today's Democrat Party, which has descended to the status of the mere political wing of the violent and extremist American Left.  This contention is incontestably demonstrated by the list of appalling practices, atrocities, and policies of the Democratic Left outlined below.

    The Hate-Whites Party.  The Democrats are fully and enthusiastically invested in the pernicious and racist canards of so-called "white privilege" and the so-called "systemic racism" attributed to all white Americans.  But the main race-based "privilege" bestowed on whites for the past 50 years has been that of being the victims of reverse discrimination in employment, education, and other fields under official governmental policies of affirmative action, diversity, and outright preference in place since roughly 1968.  Yet the Democrats propose piling on still more unjust anti-white discrimination through such outrageous policies as so-called reparations for the slavery that hundreds of thousands of white soldiers fought and died to abolish. No one is more committed to this monstrous and divisive falsehood that the Democrat Vice-Presidential candidate, the deeply racist Kamala Harris, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of not only the most radical racial reparations programs but the resurrection of such pernicious race-based policies as destructive neighborhood busing programs.

     The Pro-Riot Party.  The Democrats have enthusiastically encouraged and supported the epidemic of vicious and sometimes deadly riots that have plagued American cities under the pretext of protest against allegedly wrongful killing of black criminal suspects by police.  The Democrats (including VP candidate Harris, a vociferous cheerleader and defender of the destructive riots) both falsely insist that the riots are "largely peaceful protests," even while the flames set by the rioters burn behind them in plain sight; and, pleading inconsistently in the alternative, that the violent rioting is justified anyway by what they falsely describe as systemic racism against blacks by the police.  In fact, the very premise for both the violent "demonstrations" and outright rioting is demonstrably false: the allegedly wrongful killings have invariably been provoked by the violent resistance to lawful arrests or investigations; and, in any event, the number of whites killed in confrontations with police is roughly double the number of blacks so killed.  Regardless, the Democrats have unambiguously demonstrated their support of the epidemic of riots by successfully opposing a Republican resolution condemning such riots in the U.S. Senate.

     The Defund Police/No Bail Party.  As part of their attack on police triggered by the misportrayed police killings, Democrats have proposed and pursued a variety of utterly reckless and dangerous "criminal justice reforms," which would effectively abandon law enforcement in cities and even states where the Democrats control the government.  These radical Democrat proposals include the following:

        1.  Defunding police forces, whose resources are already strained to the breaking point by the endemic criminal violence and rioting that prevails in many Democrat-controlled cities.

        2.  Abolishing any requirement for posting bail by violent criminals as a condition for pretrial release.  The result is a vicious cycle of repeat offenses by violent criminals who should have been incarcerated pending their trials.  Instead, Democrats would promptly release those arrested for violent crime, thus enabling them to perpetrate more violence pending trials which they may avoid in any case by absconding with no fear of bail forfeiture.

        3.  Reducing criminal penalties for assaults on police and other law enforcement personnel from serious felonies to lenient misdemeanors.

    The Resisting Arrest Party.  In their rabid attacks on police attempting to enforce the law, the Democrats would effectively immunize violent resistance to arrest by criminal suspects, at least when the suspects are minorities.  In nearly every case where the Democrats and their Antifa/BLM allies have incited riots based on alleged police misconduct, the purported victims of the police actions were engaged in active resistance to arrest.  The Democrats have even gone so far as to deny police the right to shoot a felony suspect who murderously charges them with a knife.  Democrat bills to "de-felonize" assaults on police (one such bill was recently passed by the Democrat-controlled Virginia senate) are one part of their program to immunize resistance to arrest.

                                                   

The Democrats' Attacks on the Founders Could even reach Mt. Rushmore      

    The "Hate the Founders" Party.  The Democrats have openly sought to inflame racial tensions and division by obsessively harping on the evils of the American South's pre-Civil War system of slavery.  That system was abolished over 150 years ago through a civil war, in which hundreds of thousands of white Americans died on battlefields in support of the abolitionist cause.  Since then, literally thousands of remedial laws, policies, regulations, and court decisions have provided extensive remedies for the wrongful effects of slavery and discrimination -- even though most beneficiaries of these remedies were born more than a century after the end of slavery.  After all this, the Democratic Party has suddenly endorsed the most malicious attacks on the character and integrity of the most revered figures in American history because they happened to own slaves, including George Washington, the Father of our Country; Thomas Jefferson, our third President and author of the Declaration of Independence; and James Madison, our fourth President and "Father of the Constitution." None of these great men approved or instigated slavery, which was party of the society into which they were born, and each spoke strongly against the institution.  Whatever their culpability for inheriting or owning slaves in an established southern way of life, it is far outweighed by their monumental contributions to the American Revolution and the establishment of history's first democratic republic.  Yet the Democrats have all but declared historical war on our greatest Founding Fathers.  In the nation's capital itself, a Democrat-controlled commission has proposed to "remove, relocate, or contextualize" monuments and memorials to any slave-tainted patriots, including, unbelievably, the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial.  These Democrats are not merely nasty; they are flat nuts.  We can only be grateful that we have staunch patriotic governors like Kristi Noem of South Dakota to prevent them from destroying Mt. Rushmore.

    The Hate-the-South Party. Democrats nationwide have embarked on a violent and radical campaign of physically destroying any and all monuments to generals and other heroes of the Confederacy -- monuments that have stood for over 100 years.  A telling illustration of malicious Democrat extremism on this issue concerns the huge bas relief sculpture of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Stonewall Jackson on the face of Stone Mountain, near Decatur, Georgia.  Stacey Abrams, an unsuccessful Democrat candidate for Governor of Georgia and later for the party's vice-presidential nomination, famously proposed to entirely obliterate or explode the Stone Mountain Monument.  The Democrats' fanatical campaign to obliterate all monuments to Confederate heroes, including genuinely great Americans like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, is a malicious insult to millions of traditional Southerners.

    The Trans-Sexuals over Girls Party.  The Democrat-Left's obsession with accommodating the prerogatives of the minuscule cohort of trans-sexual Americans has placed them in conflict with the indisputable right of ordinary young girls to be free from the intrusion of biological males into the girls' most private spaces, like restrooms and locker rooms. Not to mention the females-only sports competitions that have been the delight of both participants and fans throughout the country.  In both legislation and litigation, Democrats have sided with the "right" of biological males who claim to be transexual to adopt the gender of their choice and to act accordingly.  In short, the Democrats have actively supported the right of hairy and muscular biological males to intrude on the privacy and modesty of young girls in their changing rooms, showers, and bathrooms.  And they endorse the right of ripped biological males to compete with genuine girls in female sports competition under the guise of so-called trans-gender equality.  This is the actual position of Democrats as proposed in proposed federal legislation.  What motivates this indecent and twisted policy position defies rational understanding.

    The Illegal Aliens Come First Party.  Again and again, the leaders and supporters of the Democrat Party have made it clear that they favor the interests and claims of illegal aliens over those of law-abiding American citizens.  Perhaps the most stunning example and proof of this point came when every candidate in the Democrat presidential debate firmly raised their hand in the affirmative when asked to indicate whether or not they supported government-funded health care for illegal aliens.  Even more appalling is the Democrats' widespread support for the creation of so-called "sanctuary cities," and even sanctuary states, wherein city and state law enforcement agencies not only refuse to cooperate with federal immigration agencies in apprehending criminal illegal aliens, but sometimes actively assist the illegal aliens in escaping the federal authorities.

    The No Self-Defense/No Gun Rights Party.  A recent episode in Missouri perfectly illustrates the Democratic party's determination to deprive law-abiding Americans of their right to defend their very homes from attack with firearms guaranteed by the Second Amendment.  When a rabid mob of BLM/Antifa-style "protesters" trespassed on their property and threatened them in their home, Mark and Patricia McCloskey bravely confronted the mob with their firearms in a classic and admirable exercise of the Castle Doctrine of legitimate armed self-defense.  But rather than prosecuting the mob for its violent criminal activity and threatening trespass, George Soros-backed and financed Democrat Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner actually charged the embattled homeowners with felony use of a weapon!  Although Missouri's Republican Attorney General and Governor have both assured that they will protect the McCloskeys from this outrageous partisan prosecution, many states lack any such Republican check against the Democrats' all-out assault on Americans' fundamental right of self-defense, including armed self-defense.  If the Democrats prevail in the forthcoming elections, those rights will be decimated and people like the McCloskeys will be hapless in the face of mob assaults from the Left.

    The Foul-mouthed Party.  The 2020 Democrats are not only deranged in their policies and programs, but they are utterly lacking in basic class and common decency.  This is keenly demonstrated by the propensity of Democrat officials, leaders, and media allies to constantly spew out verbal obscenities in public speech, most notably the so-called "f-word."  Although leaders of both parties have resorted to crude language in the past, it has generally been confined to private conversations.  But leading democrats like Beto O'Rourke, Kirsten Gillibrand and media degenerate Bill Maher, among many other leftists, routinely resort to gross and scatological language in their public discourse, with no regard to the age or sensibilities of listeners.  While this is among the least of the Democrats' innumerable political and moral offenses, it is perfectly illustrative of this nasty party's inherent lack of civility and decency.

MEDIA SUPPRESSION OF THE CANNON HINNANT MURDER AND KAMALA CONFUSION

     Splashing Rocks has repeatedly exposed and excoriated the grotesque distortion of America's racial issue by the left, the media, and the democrats in numerous articles in the past five years.  See Here, here, here, here, here, and here.  

     In a nutshell, there is a relentless barrage of falsehoods concerning the chimera of white privilege and allegedly systemic white racism, when the reality is one of widespread anti-white racism and institutionalized preference for blacks.
  
   Alas, however, due to SR's incorrigible refusal to expand its readership through linkage to vile social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and the like, our acute and incisive message has gone largely unheeded.  The high intellectual quality of our readership (which is widely international in character) is inversely related to the quantity of our domestic readership.  

     Consequently, SR has refrained from posting on the incendiary racial radicalism inspired by the notorious George Floyd incident on the grounds that (1) we have already exposed and demolished the underlying fallacies of this movement, but with minimal notice; and (2) one does not want to waste effort in the form of a "voice crying in the wilderness."
  
   But the obscene murder of a five-year-old white lad by an angry, possibly BLM-inspired black man, however -- studiously and corruptly ignored by the entire mainstream TV and newspaper media -- demands every sane and civilized American to rise in furious protest.  This is mine.

                                          

 Little White Boys' Lives Don't Matter to the Media and the Left

    Cannon Hinnant, a lively little North Carolina lad, was shot point-blank near his home by a violent miscreant, reportedly named Darius Sessoms, for no known reason.  Sessoms, a repeat felon, has since been charged with first degree murder.

     Reports suggest that the inter-racial killing was in retaliation for Cannon riding his bike onto Sessoms' yard, but that seems uncertain and improbable.  Not even the most deranged neighborhood crank would plausibly resort to such disproportionate retaliation.
    
     This appalling inter-racial murder cries out for attention, public exposure, and remorseless law enforcement prosecution.  Yet, as in countless other cases of black-on-white crime (see links above), the mainstream media has deliberately and maliciously ignored and suppressed the story.  

     The most infuriating aspect of the media and political culture's deliberate disregard of Cannon Hinnant's murder is its enormous disparity compared to the absolute orgy of national coverage and social reaction regarding the killing of repeat felon George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers.  

     As we all know by now, Floyd's killing -- in connection with his lawful arrest for counterfeiting -- triggered saturation media coverage for weeks, which in turn triggered violent street riots in cities throughout the country.  It also resulted in an onslaught of pro-black/anti-white/anti-police political and policy reaction -- like the "defund police" movement --  while exacerbating and inflaming racial resentment against whites.  

     Yet to any observer with a brain and a civilized soul, the murder of Cannon Hinnant was far more shocking and insidious than Floyd's killing.  Hinnant was an entirely innocent five-year child playing in his family's yard.  Floyd, in contrast, was a six-foot-six repeat violent felon who was being arrested for yet another crime to be added to his rap sheet.  Although Floyd's killing was unjustified and reprehensible, it was far more understandable in context than the absolutely malicious murder of an innocent and defenseless little boy.

     Yet the democrats and the media deliberately cover-up the little white boys' murder, while producing weeks of saturation and inflammatory coverage to the killing of the violent black felon.  To the democrats and the media -- and their mindless supporters in the electorate -- little white lives don't matter; publicizing such murders would undercut their obsession with the BLM mantra.

   Why do the media and the democrat left engage in this obscene evil?  Because the MSM is in close collaboration and cooperation with the Democratic Party and the political left to foster the fraudulent narrative that anti-black racism pervades America, resulting in the continued oppression and official violence against blacks.  Relentlessly repeated episodes of black-on-white violence undermine this narrative, and are therefore systematically suppressed by the left and relegated to the contemporary equivalent of the memory holes depicted in George Orwell's 1984.
  
   The endlessly repeated and pervasive canard that white racism pervades American society is patently and demonstrably false.  If any form of racism pervades this country, it is the insidiously cultivated anti-white hatred stoked on a nightly basis by the TV news shows, Democrat propaganda, crime programs, music shows, and, yes, even advertisements.  While crime shows persistently depict violent criminals as overwhelmingly white, blacks consistently constitute 50% and more of such perpetrators.  These shows create a deliberately misleading portrayal of America's crime profile.  

     As demonstrated in SR's above-cited posts and countless other articles and statistical reports, black-on-white violent crime far exceeds white-on-black violent crime, including murder.  And has, consistently, for decades.  Government-enforced discrimination runs exclusively in favor of blacks and hispanics and against whites and the one minority the left either ignores or scorns, the East Asian-Americans.  The dominant media, educational, and athletic culture openly perpetuate the myth of pervasive anti-black law enforcement, especially with their slavish and mindless embrace of the incendiary Black Lives Matter movement.

     Having given their endorsement to BLM's savage and murderous violence in cities throughout American, these quislings have cultivated the environment that allows a violent black ex-con to murder an innocent five-year old white child at point-blank range near his home -- without even a murmur of outrage in the national media.

     Meanwhile, Democrat nominee Joe Biden's selection of Sen. Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate is merely the latest reflection of the profoundly distorted racial notions that pervade American politics and culture.  

     Needless to say, Splashing Rocks has already identified and demonstrated Sen. Harris's extreme afro-racism in a post published early in the Democrat nomination battle.  See The Racial Radicalism of Kamala Harrishttps://splashingrocks.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-racial-radicalism-of-kamala-harris.html (July 26, 2019).  We then thought that Harris was the likely Democrat choice for president and, naturally, wanted to expose her dangerously radical views and policies on American's critical racial issues.  

     Although Harris proved a woeful political failure even in the left-dominated democrat primaries, she nonetheless will find herself a mere aneurysm or dementia breakdown away from the presidency in the event Biden wins in November.  In that event, the relegation of non-leftist White Americans to the humiliating status of subordinate, and politically hapless scapegoats will be assured.

     As yet further evidence of the prevalence of institutionalized black preference in our culture and politics, Sen. Harris was selected for the Democrats' Vice Presidential nomination on the basis of race from a cohort limited to  prospects who were both female and minority.  Indeed, Biden and the democrats were open and explicit about this discriminatory limitation, and proud of it.  (Ironically, Kamala Harris is not really an African-American; she is 50% Asiatic-Indian on her mother's side, and 50% Jamaican-African on the father's side).  Why the Democrats' other loyal ethnic minority, the Hispanics, do not seem to resent their ultimate exclusion from the VP selection process is puzzling.

     While the media laughably propagates the fraud that Harris is a moderate -- even Obama acolytes have mocked this sham -- the hard record demonstrates that she is not only a hard leftist, but the most far-left member of the Democrat's senate caucus.  But, as we have already demonstrated, it is her racial radicalism that makes Harris such a deeply dangerous candidate.

     Apart from her support of such radical racial policies as reparations for slavery, return to forced racial busing, and fraudulent race-based abolition of the death penalty and other anti-law enforcement initiatives, Harris's response to two notorious race-related episodes should remove any doubt concerning her ingrained racial biases.

     The alleged attack in Chicago on black actor Jussie Smollett by purported white men wearing MAGA hats is one of the most outrageous and insidious racial and political frauds of recent times.  Despite entrenched resistance to the truth by liberal media and race-baiters, it was soon authoritatively established that the episode was a deliberate ruse.  Smollett had, in fact, hired two black males to stage an attack on him so he could claim he had been attacked by Trump-supporting whites and thus strike a blow against Trump and his white supporters.  After extensive waste of resources by the Chicago police, the scam blew up in Smollett's face.  He was subsequently indicted by a grand jury on 16 felony counts in connection with his false report of an alleged "hate crime."  

     Kamala Harris, however, was one of the most outspoken advocates and supporters of the Smollett hoax.  When anyone with a functioning brain began to see through this insidious ploy, Harris was lending her unqualified support to Smollett and his racial fraud with this posting on her Twitter account:

     “Jussie Smollett is one of the kindest, most gentle human beings I know. I’m praying for his quick recovery,” the senator wrote.  "This was an attempted modern day lynching. No one should have to fear for their life because of their sexuality or color of their skin. We must confront this hate.”

     Harris not only endorsed Smollett's fraudulent claims, but conveniently exploited then in support of an incendiary anti-lynching bill she was pushing (genuine lynching is of course first degree murder, fully punishable as such by existing law).

     In complete contrast to her prompt and enthusiastic support of fraudulent non-victim Jussie Smollett, Harris has had nothing to say about the truly outrageous, and indisputably genuine, murder of Cannon Hinnant.  

     In short, when the purported victim of violent crime is black, and the (falsely) alleged perps are white, Sen. Harris virtually leaps at the opportunity to issue an unqualified endorsement of even patently dubious allegations and unqualified sympathy and support for the dubious victim.   

     But in the face of unambiguous evidence of the brutal and unprovoked murder of an innocent five-year old white boy in front of his family, Harris is simply silent (SR's internet search for any reaction on Harris' part found nothing) and unconcerned.

     To vice-presidential candidate Harris, black lives definitely matter, but the murderous loss of a young white life is evidently inconsequential.  This is what we can expect from Harris should she ever ascend to the presidency.

     Addendum:  No sooner is the "ink dry" on our post about the ignored murder of Cannon Hinnant, than another vicious murder of a young white person by black hoodlums is overlooked by the national media.  On Saturday night, August 15, 17-year old Veronica Baker was murdered outside a Bojangles restaurant in Raleigh, NC.  Devin Cordell Jones, 17, has been charged in the murder.  Three other black teens, ages 18-19, were also arrested and charged as felony accessories.  Simply more evidence of the obscenely disproportionate outrage incited by the mainstream national media with their obsessive focus on occasional offensive incidents of police violence against blacks (usually accompanying a legitimate arrest), while deliberately ignoring the overwhelming prevalence of black-on-white inter-racial violent crime.  Indeed, it is demonstrably the case that msm outlets devote more attention to, for example, cases of alleged verbal harassment of blacks by whites than they devote to actual unprovoked murders of whites by blacks, like the two noted here.  There can be absolutely no doubt that the msm outlets would have headlined and repeated reports of this incident had the races of the participants been reverse.


     

KRISTI NOEM OR LARRY HOGAN: ON THE WHOLE I'D RATHER BE IN SOUTH DAKOTA -- COVID POLICE STATE VI

            This is a governor that the leftist media like -- at least as long as he follows the left's bidding on the coercive Coronavirus lockdown.  
                                       

Maryland's Covid-obsessed Governor Hogan:  Jabba without the charm       

     He is Larry Hogan, a porcine, left-leaning RINO Republican, with all the constitutional sensibilities of Jabba the Hut.  Nonetheless, he passes the only test the political and media left consider really important at this moment of history:   He has imposed, maintained, and expanded a crude, totalitarian lockdown on the liberty of his state’s citizens in the name of copycat Corona Conformity.

     (As this post is drafted, Gov. Hogan has announced a blueprint for gradually "re-opening" Maryland in three stages -- if, but only if, the rate of Covid hospitalizations and admissions to intensive care units both trend downward for at least 14 days.  Putting aside that Maryland's extremely harsh restrictions should not have been imposed in the first place, it very much remains to be seen whether, and to what extent, Hogan will actually authorize the "liberation"of Maryland from its Covid containment -- the proof will only be in the actual pudding.)

          This is a governor that the leftist media loathe.  
                                                 

      South Dakota's intrepid and sensible Governor Kristi Noem  


     She is Kristi Noem, a slim, lovely, intelligent female who would be the media's very model of a modern, independent, and assertive woman -- if she did not fail the above-noted Corona Conformity test (and if, of course, she were not a conservative Republican).  Not only has she refused to retain or extend the soul-crushing personal and commercial lockdowns that most other governors have slavishly imposed, but she simply declined to impose any lockdown on South Dakota in the first place.  

     Instead, she has placed her trust in the people of South Dakota to act responsibly in protecting themselves and each other against the Covid-19 contagion, rather than imposing the totalitarian stay-at-home orders imposed elsewhere.

     As Governor Noem explained in an interview with Laura Ingraham: "I believe in our freedoms and liberties. . . . What I've seen across the country is so many people give up their liberties for just a little bit of security, and they don't have to do that. . . .  If a leader will take too much power in a time of crisis, that is how we lose our country." 

     Completely crushing her critics' charges that her refusal to lock down her state is irresponsible and unsafe, Noem's South Dakota has actually resisted Covid-19 more successfully than all but three other states.  As of this writing, there have been only eleven total Covid-caused deaths in South Dakota; only Alaska and Wyoming have less.  And South Dakota has experienced lower per capita deaths from Covid-19 than all but three states (Alaska, Wyoming, and insular Hawaii).

     In comparison, Hogan's strict lockdown state of Maryland has experienced a reported 910 Covid-caused deaths, with a per capita rate of 150.5 such deaths per million population.  Compared to South Dakota's 11 total Covid deaths at a rate of only 11.3 per million population!  Even taking into account Maryland's obviously greater population density and proximity to other Covid-19 centers, the enormity of South Dakota's superior resistance to the Covid contagion gives the lie to the left's spurious attacks on Governor Noem's sound and sensible policy.

     To paraphrase comedian W.C. Fields' notorious putdown of Philadelphia in the Covid context, "On the whole, I'd rather be in South Dakota."  

     Not only has Governor Noem's steady leadership protected her citizens' constitutional freedoms, it has done so even while establishing an astonishingly effective record of avoiding the Covid ravages experienced by lockdown states like Maryland, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey.

                                                             * * *

            The presidential election campaign has already gone too far for either party to change horses at this stage.  The democrats are stuck with the dementia-addled Joseph Biden, and the Republicans are irrevocably committed to the re-election of Donald Trump.  

            Like Obiwan Kenobi, Trump is presently “our only hope” to defeat the utterly disastrous prospect of prolonged totalitarian democrat rule in this country.  If a Democrat wins in 2020, along with a Democrat congress, there can be no doubt that they will so distort and corrupt the nation’s election process to make a Republican return to power flatly impossible in the foreseeable future.  Under these dire circumstances, Republicans have no feasible alternative to strongly, even ferociously, supporting Mr Trump's re-election.

            

             Were it not for the clear impracticability of a viable Republican alternative, however, events of the past week would give even longstanding, die-hard Trump supporters a degree of cause for concern.

            

            Trump’s continued commitment to the oppressive Covid policies and pronouncements of Dr. Fauci and Scarf-Lady Birx have been deeply concerning to Covid Lockdown skeptics like me.  Nonetheless, political and practical realities force one to concede that the President has little room to maneouver away from those tunnel-visioned Corona conformists. Removing or severely censuring either of them would surely result in another harsh media and political firestorm that the President simply does not need right now.

            

             Far less excusable, however, was Trump’s recent gratuitous condemnation of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s admirable decision to re-open Georgia to some degree of commercial and social freedom from oppressive Covid-19 constraints.  Trump, after all, had effectively encouraged actions like Governor Kemp's with a series of tweets urging the "liberation" of various states chafing under the constraints of Covid-19 lockdowns.

           As the cynical French diplomat Talleyrand would have put it, Trump’s attack on Kemp was "worse than a crime; it was a blunder."  It gained him absolutely no credit with his implacable democrat and media opponents; indeed, odious vice-presidential aspirant Stacey Abrams immediately bellowed that Trump deserved "zero credit" for his rebuke of Governor Kemp (who, incidentally, defeated Abrams in the Ga. governor's race).  Meanwhile,Trump's repudiation of Kemp's entirely reasonable action  has infuriated, or at least severely disappointed, many of his strongest supporters.    

            Were it not for the obvious impracticability of opening up the GOP presidential selection process at this late stage -- let alone doing so when there is an incumbent Republican President with a seemingly unshakeable base -- at least some disappointed Trump loyalists might start contemplating the heretofore unthinkable:  An appealing, attractive political alternative to Mr. Trump.  And the conservative Republican leader who most readily fills that bill right now is none other than Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota.

     Addendum:  Further corroborating the wisdom and popularity of Governor Kristi Noem's freedom-respecting management of the Covid-19 crisis, the article and video at the link show the people of South Dakota expressing their support and affection for their attractive governor in a tribute caravan at the capital.  The nation sorely needs more sensible and constitutionally sensitive leaders like Gov. Noem in this troublesome time.

     Addendum 2:  The following excerpt from a Powerline article of May 7 ("Coronavirus in Five States") confirms the great effectiveness of Governor Kristi Noem's measured and constitutionally sensitive handling of the Covid-19 crisis; she managed to maintain South Dakota's lowest-in-the-nation unemployment rate, even while keeping Covid cases and deaths to a minimum:

          "So, as Isaac pointed out, Governor Tim Walz has achieved the exacta of misery: Minnesota has both the highest unemployment rate and the highest COVID death rate in its region. South Dakota, on the other hand, has both the lowest unemployment and the lowest death rate. Minnesota’s per capita COVID death rate is 2 1/2 times that of South Dakota. An observer afflicted with common sense might infer that shutdown orders are a poor idea, and compliment Governor Noem on her successful policy. Rest assured, though, that no member of the national or local press corps will succumb to such logical thinking, even for a moment."  [emphasis added]

RIGHTEOUS RALLY IN RICHMOND -- COVID POLICE STATE V

     SR joined a large caravan of spirited, freedom-loving Virginians today to protest the unconstitutional COVID-19 lockdown orders imposed by the Commonwealth's utterly undistinguished gerbil of a governor (Northam by name) in a "drive-around" rally at the Capitol Square in Richmond.  As Jumping Jack Flash might say, it was a "gas, gas, gas."

     The mainstream media (i.e., the propaganda arm of the democrat party) will downplay the size and intensity of this energetic rally, but the excellent photos of the event captured by the Richmond Times Dispatch (at the link) provide colorful graphic evidence of the rally's extent and quality.  Since this was mostly a "drive-around" rally, predominantly confined to people in their cars, only an overhead helicopter photo would capture its full extent.  But SR can personally attest it was enough to tie downtown Richmond into knots, and the sound of rebellious horn-honking reverberated throughout the Capitol Square.  

                                                  

Legions of motorized protesters descend on Richmond to Reject COVID tyranny
                                                     Alexa Welch Edlund, Richmond Times Dispatch
       
     In short, the rally reflected a powerful surge of resistance to the disproportionate Covid-containment restrictions imposed on the people of Virginia by its feckless governor.

     It should be stressed here that it is the draconian scope of the state lockdown orders themselves that relegate Covid Coercion protesters to their cars, rather than assembling on foot in parks, malls, or capitol grounds.  

     Parking lots are largely closed (also by decree), so that it is almost impossible for large numbers of out-of-town protesters to leave their cars to walk to a central protest site.  Even if they did, they would then be subject to arrest for violating the 6-foot-separation social distancing rules, which Northam has purported to establish as a legal requirement by fiat.  Not to mention the fact that asserting First Amendment rights is not considered an "essential activity" that is exempted from the governor's obscene "stay at home" (or, worse, "shelter-in-place") rules.

     A more fiendish scheme for suppressing the First Amendment right of assembly to petition for redress of grievances would be difficult to imagine.  But here we are.

     Notwithstanding the feisty and enthusiastic protests in Richmond today, and elsewhere, the grim reality seems to be that the majority of Americans -- at least Americans who do not reside in our great Heartland, such as in South Dakota -- remain sheepishly submissive to the grotesquely coercive diktats imposed by thuggish governors in the majority of states.  Various polls indicate that only a small minority of principled Americans believe that the coercive, unconstitutional restrictions imposed in most states have gone too far.  Even if one discounts the specific accuracy of such polls -- and SR certainly does -- the silent and uncomplaining submission to these unprecedented impositions by apparently most Americans is utterly depressing and ominous.

                                                  

  Patrick Henry would not understand surrendering liberty to reduce a virus risk.


     A populace prepared to meekly and sheepishly accept (1) a ban on leaving their homes to visit friends, sweethearts, or even non-immediate family members; (2) a forced closure of all businesses save those deemed "essential" by feckless governors who lack all competence to make such a determination; (3) an arbitrary prohibition against going to the beach, swimming in a lake or ocean, or playing basketball, baseball, or any other sport; or (4) a ban on any gatherings of more than ten people, whether for a wedding, funeral, baptism, or graduation ceremony -- such a populace shamefully profanes the heritage of hard-earned liberty left to them by their historical betters.  

     Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, and Washington himself could only shake their heads in profound dismay at the readiness of so many of today's Americans to sell their birthright of freedom.  They have surrendered the precious constitutional liberties purchased with the risk and blood of patriots and warriors solely to reduce the risk that a novel virus will claim a moderately greater number of fatalities than are claimed annually by seasonal flu.

     Fortunately, more of these moribund Americans are awakening each day to the realization that the loss of liberty and livelihood demanded by the government in exchange for an uncertain reduction of an equally uncertain health risk is a very bad bargain.  In the weeks to come, we can hope that millions of aroused and angry citizens will join the vanguard of protesters who have surfaced in Richmond, Michigan, Pennsylvania and elsewhere to demand the restoration of their constitutional and economic freedoms.

"When I Was Seventeen" It Was a Very Bad Year -- COVID Police State IV

                              When I was Seventeen
                                         It was a very good year
                                         It was a very good year for small town girls
                                         And soft summer nights
                                         We'd hide from the lights.

                                                           Ervin Drake, "It Was a Very Good Year"

     Frank Sinatra's soulful rendition of this timeless classic reminds anyone with a pulse of what it was like to experience the special moments of young romance "when we were seventeen."  Dates, sports events, parties, proms, and just socializing after school (or during school for that matter) were all part of those vibrant, exhilarating teenage years that can never be duplicated.  Once it's passed, you can never fully recapture it, "like time in a bottle."

     But sadly, 2020 has not been "a very good year" for today's 17-year-olds -- or for any of our young people for that matter.  Instead, it has been utterly awful.  And they will never get it back.

         17 was a "very good year" back then -- but not so much now                             
     Thanks, grown-ups.  Thanks, governors.  Creeps.

     Overnight, and by the arbitrary decree of insipid, soulless  governors who cannot see beyond a distorted corona virus projection chart, the Springtime of their young lives has been simply cancelled.

     Whether in high school or college, today's gals and guys have been summarily -- and irrevocably -- deprived of that special spring semester of the year, and all the irreplaceable experiences that come with it.

     Instead of throwing frisbees or holding hands on the quad, they are crouching in front of a computer screen, at home alone, trying gamely to stay awake as they absorb the tedium of sterile on-line education.  

     As for holding hands:  What only yesterday was a timeless rite of springtime romance is now a criminal misdemeanor under the "social distancing" rules imposed by the pretentious governors.  The mind boggles at what punishments these same governors would like to inflict upon those wayward youths with the audacity to engage in more adventurous sexual contact, like latter-day Woodstock Aquarians.  The rack comes to mind.

                                                  

            Social Distance Violators in the Orwellian Age of Covid-19

     Instead of dressing up to join their best gal or guy for the Senior or Junior Prom, today's youngsters are drowning in the insufferable boredom of day-to-day domestic confinement with their equally bored parents and siblings.  Even a small dancing party with friends is now verboten, on at least three counts.  It would violate (1) social-distancing rules; (2) the ban against any gatherings of over 10 people; and (3) the grimly Draconian stay-at-home rules against merely visiting friends.

     Courtship has been effectively declared illegal under the stay-at-home and social distancing rules.  These rules adamantly prohibit visiting anyone other than family or someone in need of special help or support.  That does not include a romantic partner, or even a fiance.  It was easier for Romeo to reach Juliet by fighting off the Capulets and climbing over her balcony than for a suitor of the Covid Age even to get near his sweetheart.

     Young love and romance have thus been relegated to the barren wasteland of "non-essential activities" that remain prohibited unless and until the governors decide that the risk of  COVID-19 has been nullified to their complete satisfaction.  Which could be next year, or beyond.  Until then, lads and lassies must keep their dismal distance and romance remains on a hard hold.

     If this sounds like some dystopian nightmare out of Orwell or Huxley, it should.  Because it is.

     The Covid-19 virus has not been demonstrated to inflict harms exceeding those of a bad seasonal flu by any orders of magnitude.  Although it appears likely to equal or modestly exceed the 61,000 U.S. deaths attributed to the 2017-18 seasonal flu, there was essentially no political, governmental, media, or societal reaction or mass response to that flu or its spread.  

     Yet the comparable Covid-19 has generated a degree of mass, lunatic hysteria and irrational overreaction that is utterly unprecedented in American history.  Not even the fleetingly crazed response to Orson Welles' radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds" in 1938 approximates the insanely disproportionate societal and governmental reaction to the corona virus threat.

     As Jefferson Airplane foretold in the oddly prophetic White Rabbit,  we have reached the point "when logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead."

     Should an entire generation of millions of young people be deprived of the most precious, irretrievable experiences of their lives so that clueless political poltroons can claim they went "all out" to minimize the risk (not the probability!) that aged, infirm retirees, already "playing with house money" (including yours truly, except for the "infirm" part) might contract Covid-19 and possibly succumb?

     The answer is plainly "No!"  Any reasonable elderly person with a grain of decency and proportion will recognize that an entire generation of youngsters should not be deprived of the best years of their lives so that the oldsters can stretch a few more months out of the worst of theirs.  After all, we are "playing with house money."  The kids aren't.
    

     

     

COVID POLICE STATE III: "THE SILENCE OF THE LAWYERS" AMID CONSTITUTIONAL COLLAPSE

     Throughout America, an undistinguished lot of Babbitt-like governors have exploited the COVID-19 panic to impose unprecedented police-state restrictions upon a largely docile and groveling populace (excluding you and I, dear rebellious reader).  

     Never has such enormous power been exercised over so many by such small and mediocre men and women.     

     The Draconian "rules" recently imposed by the feckless Governor Northam of Virginia -- who only months ago narrowly escaped ignominious removal from office for posing in creepy black-face photos -- are typical of these pullulating coercive atrocities.

     The edicts come under the obnoxious rubric of "stay-at-home" orders (hereafter "SAH's").  By mere executive fiat, Northam has decreed that Virginia citizens cannot leave their homes except to purchase food or supplies; go to those designated places of work that are still "allowed" to remain open; or to exercise in permitted areas (e.g., running or bike paths, but not, e.g., soccer fields or basketball courts).  The callow mediocrities who pass as governors in most of our states have done essentially the same.

     These SAH rules follow other decrees which, among other things, mandate "social distancing" and prohibit gatherings of more than ten (10) people.  They at least "permit" families of more than ten to remain together, for now.  Mormons must be uttering deep sighs of relief.

     Is it necessary for SR to explain that these imperious COVID-based decrees violate precious constitutional rights that our Founding Fathers risked all to establish, and which generations of brave servicemen have risked their lives to preserve?

                                                

  America's Lawyers:  Silent as Lambs in the face of constitutional collapse

     Most notably and clearly, the governors' orders violate the First Amendment guarantees of Free Exercise of Religion and Freedom of Peaceable Assembly; the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment protections against the deprivation of liberty or property without due process of law; and the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against the taking of private property without just compensation.

     These state and local edicts violate the Free Exercise Clause, for example, through their ban against gatherings of more than ten people, as well as by other provisions that effectively force churches to close.  For example, a simple Catholic mass on Sunday, with one priest, two altar boys, a few attendant nuns, and a tiny congregation of, say, six parishioners would plainly violate the Virginia order and those of many other states, counties, and cities.  These innocent religious congregants could be prosecuted and imprisoned for up to a year in prison, simply for attending a mass in compliance with Catholic doctrine and liturgy.

     There is no doubt that this result violates the Free Exercise Clause on its face.  The only question, discussed below, is whether the violation can be justified under the constitutional standards governing the fairly extensive (but not limitless) leeway given governments to take necessary measures to protect the public health.

     (Parenthetically, the fact that many or most religious authorities have slavishly endorsed these government restrictions as fully justified tells us more about the weakness of their own religious convictions than it does about the validity of the restrictions.  There was a time when religious ministers and adherents actually considered the observation of their religious tenets more important than merely minimizing the risk of catching a virus or flu.  Not so now.)

     There is also the prospect that these orders violate Due Process, as recently illustrated by a reported incident in Connecticut.  Under various SAH orders, people cannot go out to visit others unless the visitees are family members.  In the case of an elderly woman confined to her old age home, with no living relatives to visit her, this is the functional equivalent of state-imposed solitary confinement, without due process.  When it was pointed out that the applicable SAH order would prevent the woman's only close friend from visiting her, the governor apparently relented in the face of the friend's argument that the lady's due process rights had been violated by what amounted to de facto solitary confinement.

     The comprehensive closures of many thousands of businesses as "non-essential" also present serious due process and takings concerns.  Countless companies have been designated for arbitrary closure without the slightest demonstration of the underlying rationale, let alone a due process hearing.  Any third-rate official who happens to be a governor can now shut down your business by fiat, and deprive you of your living and the use of your property, without so much as a pretense of rational justification.  If this does not raise a genuine constitutional claim, warranting at least a judicial or administrative hearing, we are all in serious trouble.

     But Virginia's and other states' rules most explicitly and literally violate the First Amendment right of assembly, which forbids both the federal and state governments (the latter via the 14th Amendment's "incorporation" effect) from "abridging . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for redress of grievances."

     There is, again, no question that a government edict broadly forbidding assemblies of more than ten people on its face violates the Assembly Clause.  As previously noted by SR, these edicts would have prohibited the gathering of the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia to declare independence.  The only question is whether the judicial precedents upholding broad government authority to impose quarantines and similar restrictions to protect the public health are sufficient to sustain the Draconian SAH edicts imposed by governors on the basis of the COVID-19 crisis.

     As with other First Amendment rights, restrictions on freedom of assembly can only be justified if they are "narrowly tailored" to further a "compelling government interest" (this principle is so well established by so many cases that citation is unnecessary).

     SR will stipulate arguendo that the compelling interest standard is satisfied here, although automatically conceding this point could create dangerous precedent.  While the need to combat the troubling expansion of COVID-19 cases and deaths seems obviously compelling -- at least in heavily infected states like New York, if not in low-impact states like Wyoming -- the same can be said with regard to the annual seasonal virus, such as the one that claimed about 61,000 lives in the 2017-18 season.  In other words, the fact that there will always be a contagious and dangerous flu or virus for the government to contain means that the government will always be able to invoke a compelling government interest, without more.

     But the really critical issue for the sweeping SAH edicts' constitutionality is whether they are narrowly tailored to further the object of containing and defeating the COVID contagion.  This is a difficult issue on which reasonable medical, policy, and legal minds can differ.

     To SR's thinking, a blanket ban on gatherings (indoors or outside) above ten people is overly broad; regardless, it hardly seems "narrowly tailored." For example, a gathering of 15 healthy high school youngsters to discuss and organize their concerns and opposition regarding the termination of their senior academic year and their last chance to participate in their chosen sports would be banned by the Virginia rules -- even if held in the open air, under social distancing guidelines.  Any public health danger posed by such an assembly would be minimal at worse, yet it would constitute a core exercise of First Amendment rights.

     Further, the constitutional vulnerability of the 10-person gathering limit and other oppressive SAH restrictions is even more evident in those states that have adopted them on the basis of the more severe problems in other states rather than their own experience.  States like Hawaii (3 deaths), Montana (6 deaths), and Idaho (9) have imposed totalitarian SAH's and gathering limits that can only be based on the panic caused by higher death totals in states like New York (2,935) rather than on the magnitude of COVID's impact in their own states.  

     The death tolls in the named states and others are miniscule in comparison to the routine annual death tolls resulting from the seasonal flu, yet neither those states nor any others found the latter to be a compelling interest justifying Draconian public health restrictions on constitutional rights.  The less the magnitude of the COVID-19 impact, the more narrowly the government restrictions should be tailored.  The mindless governors' reflexive adoption of  "one-size-fits-all" SAH edicts, regardless of extreme variations in the severity of the threat between states, seems patently incompatible with a contention that they are "narrowly tailored."

     It cannot be stressed too forcibly:  comparison of the virtually non-existent government response to the seasonal flu in, e.g., 2017-18 (61,00 deaths, averaging over 450/day) to the insanely excessive, economically suicidal over-reaction to COVID-19 (7,000 deaths so far, with Summer around the corner) strongly indicates that the state-ordered SAH's and other restrictions in response to COVID-19 are not narrowly tailored to respond to a public health threat that has not yet been shown to be decisively greater than seasonal flu.

     Despite the obvious constitutional concerns posed by the Draconian SAH's and similar decrees, America's legal establishment and so-called civil liberties bar have been conspicuously silent in the face of this unprecedented assault on liberty.  SR has diligently searched internet web sites for articles or reports reflecting the concerns and questions of the American Bar regarding the coercive COVID-19 regime, but has largely come up dry.  Only a few libertarian gadflys, like FOX News legal commentator Andrew Napolitano, appear to raise the constitutional concerns outlined above.

     The paucity of outrage or objection from the legal and civil liberties establishments tells us more about their utter hypocrisy and political corruption than it does about the constitutional concerns that are so obviously presented here.

     America's lawyers have had little difficulty in finding or inventing novel or "creative" constitutional arguments to protect the interests of nefarious criminals and terrorists, even when those arguments have no foundation in the constitutional text and little support in judicial precedent.  They fiercely defend the most malicious murders against the death penalty with "inventive" arguments that fly in the face of the Eighth Amendments' text and previously settled precedents.  They have fashioned radical arguments that fly in the face of constitutional and military history to defend the murderous terrorists of the September 11 attacks, with the result that some of the worst of them, like Kalid Sheikh Mohammed, have yet to even face trial for their epochal crimes (KSM's trial is now set for Jan. 11, 2021 -- 20 years after his terrorist crimes).

     Yet when it comes to the enforced confinement of at least two-thirds of America's population, without so much as predicate deliberations or findings, let alone a due process hearing, the American legal and civil rights establishments are nowhere to be found.  Perhaps if the confined populations were more heavily populated with suspected murderers or terrorists the American bar would engage the case.

     In the face of American history's most wide-ranging restriction of personal liberty by unfettered government fiat, the Silence of the Lawyers is deafening.  Histories tyrants, from Caligula to Henry VIII to Stalin, would be proud of them.