The U.S. Constitution saves the day
I cannot claim to be erudite and in possession of the facts enough to speak about U.S. Supreme Court rulings in a definitive manner, so forgive me for commenting on the ruling today overturning the murderous New York Governor Cuomo’s restrictions on religious gatherings.
A major difference between Canada and the US is that the US has a Constitution and that Constitution is sacrosanct.
It is like a bible of political rights. In contrast, Canada has nothing to protect the people from the Government. The US does. Canadians don’t care about freedom, while Americans do.
Canadians habitually perceive Government as benign, well intentioned and efficient and therefore they envision no need for limitations. For me , and more importantly for Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and all the Founding Luminaries of the U.S. Republic, Government was an entity to be closely watched and very limited in scope. Their reasoning was based on their knowledge of history, which shows that unchecked Government is a danger to freedom.
The decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, while decried by many Liberals as ‘favouring’ religion over ‘public health’, is not at all about that.
First of all, there is no hard science to support Cuomo’s i( or Ford’s btw) idiotic policies - but let’s put that aside for a moment.
The issue at hand is the enshrined constitutional right to religious worship in whatever form it takes. That is clear in the words of the document.
The purpose of the document is to protect the citizenry from suppression and arbitrary control by the Government of the people. The framers of the Constitution were brilliant and revolutionary in setting this down on paper. It is amazing what they actually got so right in their creation of this visionary document.
The Supreme Court’s role is to protect the constitution - it is as simple as that. Being a musician, I find it astonishing that musical concerts (with distancing ) are not allowed at this time, yet religious services are! BUT, the reason in the U.S. is quite simple - there is no enshrined ‘right to hear live music concerts’ in the U.S. Constitution. Arguably, it could fall under ’the pursuit of happiness’ language, but that is not specific enough and therefore a similar motion would likely fail if attempted.
In Canada of course, there is no pathway, no hope and no allowance for the protection of any rights of the populace in facing their Government..
Will more deaths occur as a result of this decision by the Supreme Court? Very possibly, but that is the price of freedom. Churchill could have saved thousands of lives by surrendering, as FDR could have. But they did not, because they placed Freedom higher as a priority than loss of life. For that matter, the lives lost in the Nobles’ fight for Magna Carta eight hundred years ago could have been prevented by giving in to King John, but then we would have no democracy today!
Freedom ALWAYS comes at a price, and I admire the US in placing freedom at the top of the ladder. By sacrificing freedom, it becomes a very slippery slope, as we see in Canada, Europe, and more pointedly in Russia and China. The left always wants to sacrifice freedom for Government control in their quest for ideological purity, and today the Supreme Court stood against that.
In Canada there is nothing to protect the people from Government, and the people suffer for it and it will get worse with time as the lefties push their agenda of control.