A View of the Rights of United States Citizens Residing in the State of New York

May 13th, 2020

There is a line from the novel Brave New World (Aldous Huxley) “A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

As we endure the third month of even MORE forced government overreach into our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, there is an eerie silence and numbing acceptance by a large number in society, both within the general population and within groups that are supposed to protect us from Tyranny. The government of the state of New York has for decades violated the Liberty of the people who inhabit it. The offenses being too long to list, range from violations of the Bill of Rights, to illegal restrictions on personal behavior and private property in areas they simply have no role in like cigarettes and plastic bags. BAGS!!! Through all of this, the people of New York suffer on, while a distant government in Albany shapes state policy around New York City, an area that is unlike the rest of the state in every way imaginable. With the arrival of Covid, which is a serious and TRAGIC misfortune on the world, the state government has, with the best of intentions, once again overstepped its authority with reactionary measures, and while they may have been made sincerely, the extreme to which the people’s Liberty has been violated by these measures is nothing short of an crisis and must be corrected immediately at any and all cost. Over the last several weeks, in response to the pandemic, the government of the State of New York has assaulted the liberty of its residents, restricted people to their homes, closed businesses that it does not deem essential, mandated the wearing of a mask, prevented the worship and practice of religious institutions, prevented US citizens from peacefully assembling, and is determined to set what it calls a new normal which will necessarily result in permanent abuse and overreach by government over those it is meant to serve.

There has been conformity within some groups of the general population and public officials to accept these abuses of power under the false guise of security and a failure to understand that a crisis does not allow for individual liberty to be suspended. There is a lot of discussion around if these measures are necessary, but not enough discussion around if they are legal. They are not legal and should be resisted within every level of the state. Rights are not subject to suspension by majority opinion or executive rule. Sheltering in place could be effective, but the State cannot compel or mandate anything beyond providing suggested guidelines for individuals to make informed decisions from. Masks could be helpful, but the State cannot compel or mandate that individuals wear them, especially as a condition of entering a private business which they hold no authority over. Closing certain businesses might be preferred, but the state cannot compel or mandate that the owners of private property shut down. Who is the State to determine what is essential and what is not, even if there is a health crisis. The State is not essential, individual Liberty is essential and the state has no authority to mandate the closure of any private establishment. Even if the majority of people were in favor of the state overstepping its authority, the will of the majority cannot be allowed to harm the rights of the minority. The Individual being the smallest minority in society, each individual’s Liberty must be protected. Our rights do not come from the government, from a document, or from the consent of each other. Individual Liberty comes from our Nature and exists independent of any government or society. It existed before we knew it was there and will exist beyond the lifespan of any government or empire. And the role of government is to protect liberty.

People living in despair and fear sometimes desire to be controlled, because an idea has been conditioned into them so many times and in so many ways, that they accept it as truth. In Brave New World, people live by the social engineering of the World State. Control over the population is reinforced through conditioning, social conformity, and overstimulation. Individuals, truth and freedom are all disregarded for what they view as community and stability. People are biologically manufactured with specific intelligence and traits to serve their role in the World State. They are conditioned that history and individualism is worthless and undesirable. Any natural resistance to this kind of control is supplanted by distractions, social shame, and drug supplements which reduces them to juveniles. Many feared the violent totalitarianism of Orwell’s 1984, but it seems more and more that it will not be necessary because many have turned towards the totalitarianism of Brave New World

For those who are content to allow government overreach because they believe the Liberty of others can be violated during crisis out of necessity or because it’s an emergency so just don’t question it, just because something is well intentioned or safe, doesn’t make it right. Nor does it make your opinions or conformity any more sincere than those who think for themselves, have another point of view, or want their rights protected. How can you call someone selfish for exercising their Liberty? Just because we want our rights protected, doesn’t mean that we don’t care or want to fix it. There are millions of people suffering as a result of government interference our lives. There is no justification for preventing the voluntary economic transactions between willing participants so long as they are voluntary. Who are we to criticize the hair stylist who opens their salon? Who are we to marginalize the business owner who opens their factory to produce and create? Who are we do demonize an artist who opens their gallery? What right do you have to restrict someone in how they conduct a religious service to honor a deceased loved one, or how they celebrate a child’s once in a lifetime achievement of graduation? There is no justification for mandating the forfeiture of the civil liberties of individuals in society no matter how temporary. To label people essential or not, and tell people when they can meet and for how long, and under what conditions, is to arrest their individual liberty under the false guise of some non-existent collective good. We should not be treated like children, people can make their own choices and economic decisions based on what is right for themselves and their families. Self-government.

Once this crisis is behind us, the people of New York are going to have to invest time into making some very important decisions regarding the future of this state. It is beyond obvious that the one size approach to New York state-wide governance does not work and there needs to be serious efforts made to form multiple separate States or protections, independent from the power of Albany and New York City. A convention should be called as separation is the only long term remedy. In the meantime, the current situation of overreach demands an immediate correction. Are we honestly expecting the state government or it’s judiciary to correct itself? The tendency of government is always to grow, and history has shown that once government has overreached, it rarely corrects itself back to it authorized role. It is up to the people to force that correction. One of the most important lines in the Declaration of Independence reads “Prudence, indeed will dictate that government long established should not be changed for light and transient cause, and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.*But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their rights, it is their duty, to throw of such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.” We should call on any and every public figure to act. In the state legislature, the silence is deafening. Condemn this abuse of executive overreach. In the counties, regardless of political party, serve the constituents of your region, the people who elected you to protect their freedoms, their property and their livelihood. It is time to individually nullify the orders of the State executive and render them void (Yes you can do this). Sheriffs and local law enforcement departments should publicly declare that they will refuse to enforce any unconstitutional overreach by any level of government and assist the local citizenry in organizing protests so that voices can be heard without fear. Any businesses that want to be open, should open regardless of if the state has deemed them essential or not, and if anyone attempts to assault them with “non-essential” discrimination or intimidation on their own property, commence litigation and sue them into oblivion. Those individual citizens who reside in this state who are tired of living in fear of reprisal or shame should practice civil disobedience and refuse to allow the state’s propaganda or any collective groupthink pressure or control them from exercising their individual rights.

We are so busy, trying to get by honestly in our lives, we expect that our freedoms will be protected, someone else is doing it. We think to ourselves “I have enough to worry about. There’s a State program for that, or there’s a Federal regulation for that.” We accept unlimited wars, unlimited debt, unlimited spending, unlimited corruption, and unlimited regulations of our behavior and property all because the governments that we allow to exist, tell us that they know better. But Liberty is fragile, it has to be taken back by each generation and guarded jealously from Tyranny, even the tyranny of good intentions. We have an opportunity to decentralize the government to its proper role and reclaim for ourselves the right of self-government, where-by participation and decisions can be made by those closest to the impact, our local communities, our families, and most importantly as individuals. We have to decide if we would rather have individual liberty or manufactured stability. Yes freedom has risks, but that’s what the pursuit of happiness is all about, chance is the stuff that makes life worth living and it’s what make this country the greatest that was ever conceived. For myself, I believe in Liberty and all of its outcomes.

Which brings me to the most important lines in Brave New World. When our protagonist John, who the World State and its engineered population view as a savage, replies to World Controller Mond:

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.”

“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“All right then,” said the savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”

There was a long silence.
“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.