Happy Friday. Next week at this time we’ll be waking up from our food comas.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I don’t know what word best describes the orders being given by governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California. “Shocking” comes to mind. Detestable, repulsive, arrogant and offensive are also contenders. But most of all I find them menacing.

In New York, Cuomo has banned “in-house gatherings of more than 10 people heading into Thanksgiving.” In California, Newsom decreed that private gatherings “hav[e] no more than three households; masks should be on after eating and drinking; and singing and chanting and shouting are ‘strongly discouraged.'” Specifically,

• The host should collect names of all attendees and contact information in case contact tracing is needed later.
• All gatherings must be held outside. Attendees may go inside to use restrooms as long as the restrooms are frequently sanitized.
• The space must be large enough so that everyone at a gathering can maintain at least a 6-foot physical distance from others (not including their own household) at all times. 
• Seating must provide at least 6 feet of distance (in all directions—front-to-back and side-to-side) between different households.
• Everyone at a gathering should frequently wash their hands with soap and water, or use hand sanitizer.
• People at gatherings may remove their face coverings briefly to eat or drink as long as they stay at least 6 feet away from everyone outside their own household, and put their face covering back on as soon as they are done with the activity.
• All people who are singing or chanting should wear a face covering at all times while singing or chanting, including anyone who is leading a song or chant. Because these activities pose a very high risk of COVID-19 transmission, face coverings are essential to reduce the spread of respiratory droplets and fine aerosols.

That list is copied directly from the California Department of Public Health’s website. How would you describe them? Intrusive? Unenforceable? Ridiculous? Tyrannical? Frightening?

While our elected officials are right to be concerned about Covid-19—it is a real virus and it does kill real people—these rules are the nanny state writ large. Governors are not kings or feudal lords. They are not granted the power to rule by executive fiat. The men who set up our constitutional republic certainly didn’t envision any elected official running the minutia of our personal lives. But that is exactly what is happening.

The hypocrisy of it all is infuriating, too. Newsom no sooner issued his rules than he was caught dining indoors with close friends around a table in a fancy restaurant and no one was wearing masks. And they were being so loud that management had to slide closed the doors separating them from the other guests.

We’re supposed to take orders from a ninny like this? In New York, at least three county sheriffs have told the public that they will not enforce Cuomo’s rules. New Jersey is restricting gatherings to 10 people (and Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island have similar rules). While enforcement of such rules is all but impossible, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy threatened, “that does not mean that we, as an enforcement matter, are not going to be as all over it as we can be.”

Under any other circumstances we would balk at such brazen attempts to order not only our public lives, but now our personal, private lives. What makes this difficult is that it is done under the guise of “public safety.” By issuing such rules, elected officials have created tension between your freedom as an American living under our constitution and the threat of fines or imprisonment for not obeying the law.

I remind you that Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” If we go along with these mandates to “purchase a little temporary safety,” our “essential liberty” will be further eroded. And we will have done it to ourselves.

I’m with the officers and any citizen who refuses to comply with the orders concerning private gatherings. Unless we all begin to defy attempts to impose what amount to illegal and unconstitutional measures, we will become severely restricted in our freedoms in the long term.

[Image credit: Stockvault]