Now THIS is leadership! Three cheers for Mayor Lightfoot!
It's been many years since I was an active member of what was called the "Independent Movement" in Chicago. We were basically anti-Machine Democrats who often worked in coalition with the city's tiny Republican party to provide some kind of opposition and hold the Cook County Regular Democratic Party and those who governed Chicago and in environs accountable to at least some degree.
I'm a veteran of several aldermanic campaigns, including Bill Singer's breakthrough victory in the Near North Side 43rd Ward. But the focus of my efforts was on behalf of the late Mike Holewinski's career in the State Legislature and in a brave but unsuccessful bid of his own for the City Council.
Alderman (and Professor) Dick Simpson was part of the leadership of that movement. So was David Axelrod, who went on to be an aide to the second Mayor Daley, to Mayor Emanuel, and to President Obama. Mike Holewinski ended his career as an advisor to Mayor Harold Washington.
I stopped being a Democrat after I moved to Iowa, whose Democratic Party denied its gubernatorial nomination to Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, one of the most popular politicians in the state and the one man who could have beaten Gov. Terry Branstad, because even though he was an orthodox liberal on every other issue, he was pro-life. I realized then that even though the Democratic Party was willing to accept my vote, I had no place in it. I would always be an outsider, a (sometimes) tolerated eccentric. Besides, I was nervous about what I saw as the increasing social and political radicalism of the Democrats. Four years at a seminary of The American Lutheran Church, now a part of the ELCA, showed me just how far left the American left was drifting.
I worked within the structure of the Republican Party for quite a while. Then came Donald Trump, whose nomination and enslavement of the GOP put an end to that.
Meanwhile, back home, the outsiders are back in. Mayor Lori Lightfoot is an African-American, a woman, and a lesbian. She is also, it seems, a leader.
They've been having "COVID parties" back home, it seems, to flaunt Gov. Pritzker's stay-at-home order and advance the nutty and totally irresponsible COVID denialism, President Trump and, sadly, an increasing percentage of the Republican Party and the right generally are promoting. The amazing thing (well, really not so amazing; I've been dealing with these people long enough to know this about them all too well; perhaps I should say "bizarre" rather than "amazing") is that those who are heavily into the strange mix of authoritarianism for others and libertarianism for one's self which seems to characterize the GOP and what calls itself "conservatism" these days seems to be under the mistaken impression that the Founding Fathers would have the slightest problem with public officials temporarily suspending the right of free movement or the right of assembly to what is after all the primary duty of government: to protect the people from those who would endanger them. Those who think that the Founding Fathers wouldn't be on board with "shelter-in-place" orders and even facemask laws need to do a great deal more reading of the Founders and a lot less of The Federalist and InfoWars and Breitbart!
None of the rights listed in the Bill of Rights is absolute. Freedom of religion does not give constitutional protection to human sacrifice, for example. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that freedom of speech does not mean that one has the right to falsely shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. The law in the United States has always maintained that the police have not only a right but a responsibility to break up unruly, violent assemblies; there is no constitutional right to riot. Historically, the test has been the "clear and present danger" doctrine: the idea that even speech which ordinarily would be protected is not when there is a danger that it might engender what the Supreme Court called "imminent lawless action" in Brandenburg v Ohio, the case which set the standard considered currently to be in force.
There is simply no room for doubt that the government has the right to curtail freedom of assembly and movement in a time of pandemic, or for that matter that it must do so to protect the public health and welfare. Those who raise civil liberties questions about that have no ground to stand on either in Constitutional law or the writings of the founders.
Yesterday Mayor Lightfoot came right out and said that those "COVID" parties would be broken up by the police, unlawful assemblies in defiance of Gov. Pritzker's emergency orders broken up or prevented and that individuals who violated the shelter-in-place order would be arrested and jailed.
Good for her. Such people endanger the health and safety of others, and since they are doing so the public needs to be protected from them just as they are from anyone else whose unlawful actions are a public menace. The Founding Fathers would have completely approved, and the small number of extremist fanatics who are defying and demonstrating against perfectly legal, proper, and necessary actions by the government have neither a constitutional, a legal, nor a rational leg to stand on.
Photo of Lori Lightfoot by McLean Center from YouTube video "Facing Hard Truths: A Necessary Reckoning for What Ails Chicago" used under Creative Commons 3.0 license.
I'm a veteran of several aldermanic campaigns, including Bill Singer's breakthrough victory in the Near North Side 43rd Ward. But the focus of my efforts was on behalf of the late Mike Holewinski's career in the State Legislature and in a brave but unsuccessful bid of his own for the City Council.
Alderman (and Professor) Dick Simpson was part of the leadership of that movement. So was David Axelrod, who went on to be an aide to the second Mayor Daley, to Mayor Emanuel, and to President Obama. Mike Holewinski ended his career as an advisor to Mayor Harold Washington.
I stopped being a Democrat after I moved to Iowa, whose Democratic Party denied its gubernatorial nomination to Atty. Gen. Tom Miller, one of the most popular politicians in the state and the one man who could have beaten Gov. Terry Branstad, because even though he was an orthodox liberal on every other issue, he was pro-life. I realized then that even though the Democratic Party was willing to accept my vote, I had no place in it. I would always be an outsider, a (sometimes) tolerated eccentric. Besides, I was nervous about what I saw as the increasing social and political radicalism of the Democrats. Four years at a seminary of The American Lutheran Church, now a part of the ELCA, showed me just how far left the American left was drifting.
I worked within the structure of the Republican Party for quite a while. Then came Donald Trump, whose nomination and enslavement of the GOP put an end to that.
Meanwhile, back home, the outsiders are back in. Mayor Lori Lightfoot is an African-American, a woman, and a lesbian. She is also, it seems, a leader.
They've been having "COVID parties" back home, it seems, to flaunt Gov. Pritzker's stay-at-home order and advance the nutty and totally irresponsible COVID denialism, President Trump and, sadly, an increasing percentage of the Republican Party and the right generally are promoting. The amazing thing (well, really not so amazing; I've been dealing with these people long enough to know this about them all too well; perhaps I should say "bizarre" rather than "amazing") is that those who are heavily into the strange mix of authoritarianism for others and libertarianism for one's self which seems to characterize the GOP and what calls itself "conservatism" these days seems to be under the mistaken impression that the Founding Fathers would have the slightest problem with public officials temporarily suspending the right of free movement or the right of assembly to what is after all the primary duty of government: to protect the people from those who would endanger them. Those who think that the Founding Fathers wouldn't be on board with "shelter-in-place" orders and even facemask laws need to do a great deal more reading of the Founders and a lot less of The Federalist and InfoWars and Breitbart!
None of the rights listed in the Bill of Rights is absolute. Freedom of religion does not give constitutional protection to human sacrifice, for example. Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that freedom of speech does not mean that one has the right to falsely shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre. The law in the United States has always maintained that the police have not only a right but a responsibility to break up unruly, violent assemblies; there is no constitutional right to riot. Historically, the test has been the "clear and present danger" doctrine: the idea that even speech which ordinarily would be protected is not when there is a danger that it might engender what the Supreme Court called "imminent lawless action" in Brandenburg v Ohio, the case which set the standard considered currently to be in force.
There is simply no room for doubt that the government has the right to curtail freedom of assembly and movement in a time of pandemic, or for that matter that it must do so to protect the public health and welfare. Those who raise civil liberties questions about that have no ground to stand on either in Constitutional law or the writings of the founders.
Yesterday Mayor Lightfoot came right out and said that those "COVID" parties would be broken up by the police, unlawful assemblies in defiance of Gov. Pritzker's emergency orders broken up or prevented and that individuals who violated the shelter-in-place order would be arrested and jailed.
Good for her. Such people endanger the health and safety of others, and since they are doing so the public needs to be protected from them just as they are from anyone else whose unlawful actions are a public menace. The Founding Fathers would have completely approved, and the small number of extremist fanatics who are defying and demonstrating against perfectly legal, proper, and necessary actions by the government have neither a constitutional, a legal, nor a rational leg to stand on.
Photo of Lori Lightfoot by McLean Center from YouTube video "Facing Hard Truths: A Necessary Reckoning for What Ails Chicago" used under Creative Commons 3.0 license.
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