We have liberties — if government allows them

We learn a lot of things in school. Some of them true and some of them not so true.

Take the rights of citizens, for example. Weren’t we taught that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to practice our religions, along with keeping the government from “preventing the free exercise thereof ?” Weren’t we also supposed to have the right of “peaceful assembly?”

Some say these rights are “inalienable.” In other words, they can’t be taken away by government. Many believe they are “God-given.”

Well, if that’s true, I guess God is not as a powerful as a presidential executive order or holdings of the U.S. Supreme Court.

We all know what happened to over 100,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II. Simply by President Franklin Roosevelt signing an executive order, they were rounded up (thanks to information provided by the 1940 U.S. Census) and put in concentration camps. No right to trial, fair hearings, attorneys, life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness. Their crime? Being born of Japanese ancestry, of course.

Years later, the government apologized for this outrageous unlawful act and paid each victim still living, a minimal compensation of $20,000.

Now you’d think we would learn from our past, but that’s not the way it works. Let’s look at a Supreme Court decision just handed down on May 29.

The South Bay Pentecostal Church, et. al., sued Gov. Gavin Newsom over his decree that denied them their First Amendment right to peacefully assemble and practice their religions. But Chief Justice Roberts rejected their petition for injunctive relief.

The plaintiffs believe it is impossible to practice this “guaranteed” right when a church is limited to 25% of building capacity or 100 people, whichever comes first.

So why the Court’s denial? Well, Chief Justice Roberts stated that a respiratory illness has killed “thousands” in California (actually, just several hundred more than die in traffic accidents in the same state each year) and that Newsom’s order is only “temporary” (although the governor at this time has given no date as to when his order will be lifted).

The Chief Justice continued his reasoning by stating that secular assembled groups have been subject to limitations. Therefore, religion has not been singled out for discrimination.

So I presume this means that as long as everyone’s rights are violated equally, then suspension of our liberties is an acceptable practice.

It seems based on this decision that the governor now has the authority to limit our constitutional rights if “the health of the people” is at stake. I guess this gives him and other state bureaucrats the power to arbitrarily make up the rules.

But is there something “scientific” and essential about “25%” of a church’s capacity or a limit of no more than 100 members? Could it just as well be 38% or 126? What if a church has 10,000 members? Couldn’t they be reduced to 1,000 instead of 100? Is one decree more “scientific” than another?

Not all the Court agreed with this denial of injunctive relief. Justice Thomas and Justice Gorsuch, dissented, along with an opinion written by Justice Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh argues that churches under Newsom’s order are not treated in the same manner as secular businesses. The Justice wrote that “California’s discrimination against religious worship services contravenes the Constitution.”

Citing McDaniel v. Paty (1978), the “government may not use religion as the basis of classification for the imposition of duties, penalties, privileges or beliefs.”

The Justice goes on to reason that California needs a “compelling justification” for distinguishing between worship services and secular businesses that are not restricted to occupancy restrictions.

Yet unfortunately, the highest Court in the land has spoken, and our right to practice “the free exercise thereof ” has been curtailed in the name of questionable “science.”

I think my teachers and professors misled me on the idea of constitutional rights. I can only conclude from this recent decision, along with others over the years, that there are no inalienable Godgiven rights. If that were true, then the vast majority of people throughout history would have had them.

But in reality, inalienable rights are only an ideal. We all have liberties as long as the government tolerates them. Yet sadly, it appears our masters now have the option to take all or part of these rights away whenever the emotion of fear dominates a public health or political narrative.