Now is the Time

 Now we the people of these United States have recognized a hard truth: this nation’s health and life is under a serious threat. 

A dread disease, alias Coronavirus, or Covid-19, has spread rapidly among our people, and continues daily to infect our people with a contagion that has proven to be destructive to good health and, in many cases, fatal.

Our public officials have responded, all across this wide continent in many different ways. Responses of our citizens have ranged from denial, to lackadaisical, to serious, to fearful, to fanatical.

Public policy has been all over the map. 

If you live in a so-called blue state, probably with high urban population, chances are the responses there—official and personal—are seriously restrictive and vigilant.

If you live in a so-called red state, probably with a population spread out thinly among smaller cities, towns and vast countryside, chances are the responses there are permissive and and somewhat libertarian. 

So this year, we have heard a lot of discussion and debate about public policies that recommend, mandate, or command us to wear masks, wash our hands, and practice social distancing, generally recommended as 6 ft.

That’s all well and good, appropriate. 

This writer fervently urges you to consider these practices to be acts of personal responsibility that truly do protect the health of yourself and our fellow-citizens.

The laws of our vast land have also manifested a wide array of social controls that are known to be effective in stopping the spread of Covid.

And we all know that the degree to which .gov—local, state and federal—have placed restrictions are controversial. 

Many citizens insist that lockdowns are the way to go.

Many others insist that lockdowns are a crock, and represent the first phases of socialistic control.

The States and their various Governors and Legislators have displayed a wide variety of responses to this public health crisis. 

The State of New York—God bless ‘em— was required, very early on in this pandemic, to take extreme measures to attack the coronavirus. Those Empire-Staters have been through a lot of pandemical pandemonium, medical overload and deadly tragedies that good ole boy Tom in Talledega and farmer Suzy in Sioux Falls would never even contemplate.  

So the State of New York had to crack down hard on the damn Covid, and this unfortunately required a restrictive crackdown on gatherings where the disease easily spread.

Gov. Cuomo proposed an appropriately restrictive plan, which was approved by the legislature, and instituted as law, to impose certain limits on to what extent citizens of New York could be together in commercial or public spaces and/or gather in public or religious spaces.

These mandates imposed certain limits on religious gatherings, for obvious reasons. But in so doing, the State of New York crossed a line of liberty that is set forth in the 1st Amendment of our US Constitution, to whit:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

So the State’s well-intended health controls were challenged in the Courts. Eventually, two cases were brought forth to obtain release from the Covid mandates that limited religious gathering . . .

Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo

 and Agudath Israel v. Cuomo.

These two Court cases sought to release certain religious groups to renew their practice of gathering  together to celebrate their faith.

Lower courts in New York decided in favor of the State’s mandate. The case was appealed, went to our US Supreme Court, and was reversed.

By order of the US Supreme Court, those two religious bodies (and ostensibly ?many or all? others) are free to renew their prior practice of gathering to worship.

I agree, and here’s why.

We’ve been dealing with this pandemic for the worser part of a year, and it’s time we learned to contend  against as grown-up citizens and localities without constant control from the nanny state.

We now know that masking WORKS, washing hands is only RIGHT (mama always said!) and social distancing makes perfect SENSE and furthermore its no big deal anyway. . . no terrible inconvenience. 

Just do it! 

And go back to church or synagogue or mosque or temple or whatever it is you do to pray or make hay with those who are like unto you. But be careful, and  remember: 

WEAR the mask, WASH your hands, DISTANCE yourself, and we’ll get through this as a free--and a free-living  people.

Now is the time for all men and women of goodwill to come to the aid of their country by washing hands, wearing masks and keeping their distance from fellow-citizens. 

King of Soul