United States: Fifty Little Dictatorships

It is now clear that those responsible for the Covid response aren’t looking for amnesty or forgiveness; they seek a government structure that codifies their authoritarian impulses and a legal system that offers citizens no means of demanding accountability from their rulers. Publicly, they are searching for any “emergency” to increase their power. Privately, they are looking to put that system into law.

The largely unknown Uniform Law Commission (ULC) has proposed a law that would drastically increase executive power in the United States and reduce citizens’ legal right to resist unconstitutional edicts.

The Act threatens to strip Americans of their legal ability to oppose mandates, lockdowns, or other government orders. It offers total deference to governors in deciding what constitutes an emergency. No evidence would be required for state leaders to impose arbitrary and irrational limits on human liberty. Schools, businesses, and churches would be subject to the whims of executive power.

Citizens had painful reminders of their leaders’ mammalian flaws of the last three years. Hypocrisy, irrationality, self-interest, and insatiable pursuits of power became commonplace. There were the double standards of governors flaunting their own restrictions and granting blatant political favoritism. Children suffered under cruel and irrational edicts and states criminalized basic human liberties. Governors called on local law enforcement to break into homes to arrest families for gathering at Thanksgiving.

Now, the ULC proposes granting governors more power for when the next emergency arrives. There is no reason to expect angelic behavior in the next crisis. The attempt here is to end what most annoyed the ruling elites during the Covid crisis: the relatively decentralized response due to American federalism.