By Dalia Díaz
Mayor Dan Rivera’s call for the National Guard to come into Lawrence is creating a bit of alarm among those that don’t know why he did it and what they are doing. That always makes news and he gets more air time – which he craves!
If he is trying to suggest that this deployment is similar to the 2018 gas disaster deployment, it is not. This is different because in 2018 all affected cities and towns joined Lawrence with the deployment of the National Guard. I don’t see that type of “cooperation” or “agreement” in this crisis but, maybe I missed it.
Have Andover, North Andover and Methuen join in by inviting or requesting National Guard assistance? Let me know if I am mistaken if the area Merrimack Valley cities and towns have all joined in to ask the “assistance” of the National Guard. If they have, are they afraid of their residents or looking to impose mandatory restrictions – or are they ASKING for voluntary cooperation.
The end result is that a small group of guardsmen came to place flyers on car windshields to remind people to wash their hands, etc.
Even if that were true, the basic premise doesn’t change – people are not to be trusted. Let me ask you this question: Does the Governor possess the right to stop cars with New York license plates to ASK drivers to self-quarantine as they enter Massachusetts? However altruistic this may be, there are serious interstate Federal and civil rights implications that any legal scholar will tell you require
(1) Federal Authority; and,
(2) that the action be “strictly tied” to the behavior or action sought to regulated.
I suggest this “action” has little to no actual public health correlation or purpose. I would take my car, registered in Massachusetts, and drive to New York to bring my family back here to avoid the “drag net.” I would be surprised if the Department of Justice has not already been in contact with State officials and have “discussed” the use of these tactics without Federal authority. Very interesting, indeed!
I am not suggesting that actions that may be out of the ordinary may have to be taken or restrictions that are based in providing medical safety measures should not be taken as necessary. However, right now it appears that the various State Officials are “making it up” as they go along, attempting to make it appear their commands are to be followed like the pied piper syndrome (the fairy tale of a stranger saving a town by leading away rats via dance and melody.)
I suppose people enjoy being told what to do. At times like these, it is important to raise questions that assure basic Constitutional Rights and Freedoms will survive and remain protected through the crisis and after it passes. If not, the actions taken that curtail and abridge these rights will be used again – because they worked before.
This reminds me of a quote from Lord John Dalberg-Acton, a famous British historian from the nineteenth century that my good friend Nunzio DiMarca used to say often: “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely” and still applies.
The true test may come when the more difficult stage of this horror arrives. When it comes time to reduce all the “protective measures” to return to normalcy, we will see where the greatest opposition is registered. The greatest complaints will likely come from “socialists” and “communists” who will not be so willing to return to the democratic republic way of life – no more free stuff!
