Horowitz: A new declaration of independence — from coronavirus fascism and anarchy

Nearly 244 years ago, our forefathers identified the “self-evident” truth of unalienable rights we are endowed with by God, foremost among them life, liberty, and property. They recognized that to secure these rights, governments are created by the consent of the people and that any government that refuses to recognize these rights is illegitimate. I never thought I’d live to see a time like this, but those rights are being called into question by state governors and county executives who are trampling them indefinitely with impunity. Clearly, there is a need to reaffirm the original Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration warns us not to revolt against a government “long established” “for light and transient causes.” But what we are seeing today is neither light nor transient, but rather stemming from “a long train of abuses and usurpations” for which “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1774, “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.”

The hypocritical consolidation of poisonous policies that our overlords have employed without the consent of the governed are too numerous and deliberate to be chalked up to simple disagreements over the science of the virus and the strategy of quarantine. Rather, they demonstrate an insidiously deliberate attempt to use the virus to breach the safeguards of the Constitution and to remake America into the worst mix of tyranny over peaceful citizens and anarchy for dangerous criminals.

"Such has been the patient sufferance” of we the people for six weeks, and we have borne these injustices without asking questions. Yet now, “the history of the present” political leaders “is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over” us.

“To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

• The political class has refused to allow us to peacefully assemble, worship our God, and earn a living, even when those activities are done using best public health and hygiene practices.
• They have banned our most basic natural right to freedom of movement, even as individuals, and have forced us to wear humiliating masks. A government that has consistently concocted privileges and called them rights has now crushed the most foundational right of personal liberty, defined by Blackstone as “the power of loco-motion, of changing situation, or removing one’s person to whatsoever place one’s own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law.”
• They have arbitrarily and indefinitely made restrictions on movements, activities, and property rights protected by the First, Fifth, and 14th Amendments of the Constitution, yet they have left open liquor and marijuana shops.
• They endangered the public health by keeping the subways open in the most virus-stricken cities, while demanding you report on your neighbors for not properly social distancing outside on a sidewalk.
• They have forced the closure and bankruptcy of many hospitals and reduction in medical staff under the guise of conserving resources to treat the virus, but when their predictions of hospitals being overrun failed to materialize and the medical staffs were left without work, they maintained the restrictions on vital health care procedures.
• After reams of studies have been produced by prestigious research institutions showing that the government’s unprecedented strategy of treating a virus with house arrest was refuted by facts, our leaders repeatedly refused to consider other opinions and sought to stifle the free flow of debate.
• The same tyrants who viciously went after law-abiding citizens for exercising their God-given rights released thousands of dangerous criminals onto our streets.
• The same corrupt judges who, almost without exception, refused to intervene when fundamental rights were being stripped from citizens mandated the release of dangerous criminal illegal aliens into our communities instead of repatriating them back to their countries.
• The same governments that have allowed their city places and churches to become sanctuaries for gang members and sex offenders who have infiltrated our country illegally refuse to allow such sanctuary for peaceful American citizens.
• The same government that has induced record unemployment continues to admit and extend foreign worker visas, including for people from China, the source country of this crisis.
• While Americans remain under house arrest, supposedly to stop the spread of a virus through movement of people, over 1,000 Afghan nationals have been brought into the country as refugees, itself a policy born out of unjust sacrifice of American blood and treasure in a godforsaken land.
• The same government that failed to protect us from a China virus by recklessly bringing in travel and immigrants for months on end finally responded to the virus by turning this nation into China’s reign of tyranny.
• The same government that has made vital goods scarce through an arbitrary and capricious shutdown has spent years making us dependent on the very country that wrought this plague on the world.
• As criminals are released without monitoring devices, Americans are now being monitored by Chinese drones that our own government warned could be providing information to the very government that is responsible for this plague.
• Rather than getting Americans working again with tax cuts and deregulation, our government has bankrupted our future and debased our currency with trillions of printed dollars to pay people and incentivize them not to work.

Taken in totality, these actions are designed to ensure that Americans can no longer live in freedom and dignity without being vassals to government, while being forced to confront the anarchy of criminals and illegal aliens roaming their streets.

"In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury” and even collaboration with digital platforms to stifle freedom of speech and assembly.

Now is about the time we would “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" to fight for independence. However, in our system today, we need not risk our lives to beat this tyranny; we just need to rise up politically and refuse to give support to the usurpations and the usurpers. We need not risk bloodshed to preserve the sacrifice of the blood our forefathers shed to give us this opportunity to once again restore our republic peacefully.