This perhaps will be the most important "political" blog entry I will make. I need for you, dear reader, particularly if you are a citizen of the United States, to have a seat and read this with your full attention and contemplative capabilities. If you don't have time, then close this and come back later when you do because I need your absolute and full attention.
I recently posted on the NYS "Excellsior Pass". It has gotten very few views relative to say my post on the linguistic origins of the word "Amen". This bothers me because relatively speaking, the subject of "Amen" is the equivalent of having a smudge on the bottom of your foot. These "passports" are far more important of an issue.
I have previously written about what the US form of government is and how it differed from the governments of the time but also from many current governments. I'm going to do it again because without this understanding the threat of "passports" cannot be wholly understood. So let's look at it in brief.
The founding principle of the US style government up until March of 2020, was that the individual had natural rights granted to them from God who is the Supreme Authority. I'm not going to debate the religious angle. I'll say that we can equally say that these rights are granted by nature. Given that these rights have their origins in a Supreme Authority, no [hu]man has a right to abridge these rights.
Period.
So when the US Constitution was written and adopted the form of government was that of constraint. That is, the government was given limited responsibilities and only the amount of power needed to carry out those responsibilities. It is important to note that the people who came to settle and found what would become "America" were seeking to escape monarchies and religious authorities. In those places, the people were the subject of the royal class or the church. You had no natural rights, you had whatever privileges the rulers said you had. Note that I did not say "rights the ruler says you have". If a person can "grant" you a right, they can also take it away. A "right" that can be taken away is NOT a right.
People given such power to determine what you can and cannot do, think, say or go inevitably abuse this power. The likelihood of this abuse grows exponentially when they think they are doing it for "the greater good".
So the US form of government was one in which specific powers were granted to various arms of government and where those powers are not specifically granted to the government, they are retained by the people. Again, I must point out that the people retain the power. This enforces the idea that the people are the most powerful agents in the US state, NOT the government.
Most of us are familiar with the first 10 Amendments of the US Constitution. Most people look at them as rights granted by the government. You'll hear people say things like "I have a 1st Amendment right to..." That is an entirely incorrect statement. The first amendment is an explicit constraint on government from infringing on the right to speak or practice your religion or peacefully assemble. Hence, it's not that the first amendment grants you the right to speak. Instead, it is that the government has no right to keep you from speaking. Nor does it have the right to employ a private party to do so in it's stead.
So you have inherent rights to travel freely. Persons who attempt to stop you are guilty of kidnapping. Even when the state wants to detain you, you have a right to be told why you are being detained. That's the "due process of law". And "due process of law" cannot be one that infringes on the inherent rights of the citizen. So for example, you cannot be detained by the state because someone in that government passed a law criminalizing some aspect of your speech (libel and defamation excepted).
You have the right to gather freely, whether that "gather" is two people or ten thousand people. You most definitely can have as many or as little people as you want in your private property.
Now there are readers going "oh but there are fire codes". Sure. Those codes were approved by legislatures as proscribed by the legislatures. Furthermore, those codes do not infringe on your rights.
The point here is that in the US the people have rights the government simply cannot infringe upon without meeting very high bars. Of importance is that the government could not interject itself into the regular coming and going of citizens as the "passports" require.
These "passports" signal a fundamental change in how America works and it is downright dangerous. Let's assume that such a thing is done by private entities entirely, which is not the case. After what you've seen happen this year, you actually trust a private company to decide whether you can or cannot enter a public-serving location AS WELL AS private ones?
This is not about privacy. The privacy argument is a sideshow. It doesn't matter if your information is "secure". Your information should not be the basis of going about your business. Period.
Some of you have bought into the "we need to open up society and thus we need..." nonsense. This is classic psychological conditioning. Yes, it is nonsense. "WE" did not shut down society. "WE" did not shut down businesses. "WE" did not attempt to lock people in their homes. Nor did the virus shut down society. The responsibility lies entirely on the government officials acting entirely outside of the constitution. The state usurped your right AND responsibility to make informed risk analysis decisions about your life. Its central conceit being that it had to act on your behalf because you may make decisions these agents do not agree with.
Let me be clear. I do understand and agree with the concept of "emergency powers". For example a category 5 hurricane is about to hit a state. Governor says to shelter in place, nobody on the road, etc. until the storm passes. That is reasonable and it has a close end date. Similarly, a massive snowstorm is expected. Governor says to stay off the roads until the storm passes and we clear the streets. Again, this is reasonable. Even the so-called "15 days to flatten the curve" that kicked this whole thing off, was, in my opinion, reasonable given what we "knew". I put knew in quotes because it is becoming clear that a lot of the images coming out of China was propaganda. What was happening in Italy was probably more real and perhaps more appropriate. But if the state saw a situation where it would not be able to treat people and needed time to prepare more facilities, then I can see an argument for shutting things down. However; once extra spaces were made, that should have been the end of it. Instead, the agencies, realizing that people were going to be compliant so long as they were scared moved the goalposts and continue to move the goalposts. None of these lockdowns should have gone past the end of April. The 'Emergency", if it continued should have been imposed on elder care facilities.
Never forget that it was Governor Murphy of New Jersey who had ZERO qualms stating that the first amendment was "above his pay grade". Never forget that the lawyers for the state of Pennsylvania actually argued in court that YOU have NO RIGHT to make a living. Do not overlook the fact that states abused the "licensing" laws to close businesses.
Do not forget that these state agencies sent armed agents to those acting contrary to these wholly unconstitutional edicts, meaning ultimately they were willing to kill to maintain this power grab.
Understand that even if these so-called passports are "only" run by private companies, they will employ the state to enforce them. What happens when a citizen refuses to provide this proof? They will be trespassed and who enforces trespass law? The state. Hence ultimately a private company "passport" IS a state passport. this is why businesses are willing to go with the passport. Now say the state says to the private entity that they will not enforce a trespass "violation" stemming from a "lack of passport"? The entire thing falls apart because without a means of enforcement there is no "rule".
This is why this idea is so dangerous. It turns the entire premise of the US state from one where the government is constrained and people have rights, such as movement, gathering and bodily autonomy that cannot be infringed upon OR you have a state with unlimited power in the name of "safety" and what were considered rights are now "privileges" to be revoked if a private company deems it should be with enforcement done by the state.
All this to say that there is no "private company passport". If this goes into effect, which it is starting because there are too many people who "wanna have fun" and don't care about the long term consequences of complying with these "trial periods" it will be the end of America and it may as well be a satellite of China where the social credit system is in full effect. And have no doubt that this is exactly where it is going. It has already been directly applied to so called "far right" entities such Gab. Don 't think it won't expand.
