Sunday, April 5, 2020

An open Letter to President Donald Trump concerning Corona-virus Response:



Dear Mr. President,
                First let me note that you and your family are in our prayers in this difficult time, and that I do not pretend to have a comprehension of the numerous and crushing challenges that you face day by day.
                Having said that though there is a point that no one has called into question that needs to be addressed, you have often said that your first priority is the health and safety of the American people. This is not correct. Since the days of George Washington the oath of office that you and so many other great men have taken is to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States.
                Of course a significant part of upholding the constitution is the safety and welfare of the American people, but what makes America unique and exceptional is the freedoms expressed in our Declaration of Independence and codified in our Constitution. If it should come about that we succeed in greatly in mitigating the spread of this virus but we harm the very constitution that you have sworn to uphold and defend then we are unworthy of the legacy of sacrifice that has navigated us through the murky waters of history and made the American dream the envy of all mankind.
                Part of the reason our constitution is so effective is the brilliance of the Federalist system  that  allows for the differences in a vast and varied landscape and a regional subculture area by area to make the whole of our nation stronger. This unilateral response to this threat cuts at the very heart of this system. To bankrupt a barber in Smyrna Georgia and force him to accept government handouts in order to survive will not save a single life in Manhattan. To treat rural America with the same remedy as NYC to silence a million innovative businesses and individuals in one heavy handed blow is not just foolish it breaks the very oath of office you have taken.
                So much of your success has come from public private partnerships with men like Mike Lindell stepping up to help in this crisis, but how many millions of Mike Lindell’s are being squelched in their efforts to help. How many millions of small business men, inventors and innovators lack the clout and resource to have the President’s personal phone number or to have a friend in the governor’s office that would allow them to be declared essential in order to implement their innovations? Most of these ideas and innovations might fail but somewhere there are the preverbal bicycle shop owners ready to invent manned flight that your social distancing guidelines are suppressing.
                Right now governors all over this country are drunk with power, Newsome and Cuomo, terrible men whom you keep praising, Justice, Hogan and Northam, who seem to be racing to see who can get there state to resemble 1980’s  Moscow the fastest are all taking their ques from the top and you sir, could begin to halt their excesses simply by reminding them that they are no better than Abraham Lincoln and that their little disaster declarations do not give them unlimited power to suspend Habeas Corpus  any more than the Civil War did Lincoln.  
                                What may become the most damnable legacy of this crisis and of your administration if you don’t change course soon, is the harm being done to religious freedom. This is a heartbreaking irony considering that no President in history has been a stronger champion of religious freedom than you, but one crisis and you seem willing to throw that away. When you allow government to close churches for their own good, than freedom of religion becomes a technical argument rather than a principled one.  Churches now meet at the Governments discretion? Do we now need the permission of the county health department to hold services? Are we now able to be shut down during every seasonal flu outbreak? Shut down preemptively because there might be a seasonal flu outbreak?  Churches are the number one source of aid, of relief, of support, and of hope in every crisis and we should be doing the same now but we are barred from congregating. God has always worked in the mightiest ways in times of despair, when his people come together to pray (facebook prayerchats are not the same) and when they have braved every kind of danger and disease to take the Gospel to the world.  In my community not one church has chosen to defy these orders and hold services. I was stupefied when our church chose to cancel services in March and argued so vehemently with my pastor against the decision that I had to call him back to be sure we were still friends. I fear we shall rue the day for many generations to come when we sold our liberty in an attempt to avoid making waves and the risk, very slight in our rural community, of catching a virus.
                There is a very old saying that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Step away from the models and the New Yok, Los Angeles media, and the bureaucratic experts and look at the harm you are doing to Middle America, I.E the people who elected you in the first place. Our nation can survive a virus even a devastating one but I am not sure we can survive a competent Executive Branch with good intentions.  I close with the words of a famous American one far more eloquent them myself:
“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”  Patrick Henry
                Your friend and our generations Patrick Henry, Rush Limbaugh has often said no one can separate Trump from his supporters but Trump. The longer you ignore your duty to the US Constitution the greater the danger of that very thing happening becomes.
                Sincerely John W Tabler, concerned citizen




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