Bill Gates, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and anyone else advocating for a federally mandated lockdown either doesn’t understand the Constitution’s structure or doesn’t respect it.
On April 11, The Washington Post ran an article about plans being made to reopen the economy. The article complains that state governors (rather than the White House) are leading the planning, which has resulted in a “mind-boggling level of disorganization,” according to a Centers for Disease Control director.
The incessant bleating of prominent health leaders over the lack of federal control in this crisis only underscores how little they understand or respect this country’s Constitution and the freedoms it seeks to protect. Although the White House certainly has emergency authority to mandate all number of efforts to respond to crisis, and obviously can pressure local leaders, the coronavirus has highlighted the structural nature of the Constitution and that one of the saving graces in the insanity we are living through is that lockdowns are local.
Our country’s structure is pretty straightforward on paper, even if things get a little complicated once all the parts start moving in real time. When the states formed the Union, they ceded power to a federal government cautiously, carefully granting to Congress enumerated powers and creating checks and balances to keep the federal government from evolving into tyranny. At least, that was the plan.
The states retained their historic “police power.” The police power is a state’s inherent authority to govern with a view toward its citizens’ health, safety, morals, and general welfare. Certainly, a state’s plenary powers are limited by the U.S. Constitution and state constitutions, but absent those restrictions, a state’s power is very broad.
Ordering lockdowns, then, is within the states’ authority, not that of the federal government. Bill Gates, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and anyone else advocating for a federally mandated lockdown either doesn’t understand the Constitution’s structure or doesn’t respect it.
On the federal level, emergency measures—no matter how necessary—always pose a danger to freedom. Historically, the exercise of authority triggered by an emergency brings to life a new federal power that never returns to the fully dormant posture from which it came. (I’d go further and say the power is created, but we maintain the ruse that it was always there and never exercised.) If you need an example of radical change in federal authority brought about by an emergency, look no further than President Franklin Roosevelt’s response to...
