Friday, November 27, 2020

Exactly What Isn't Working in Mitigating Covid-19?

Good health involves eating right, exercising, and avoiding addictive behaviors. Though individual good health betters society in general, the government cannot mandate citizens to follow good health rules.  Ask New York. Six years ago, New York politicians attempted to ban Big Gulp soda drinks "for the good of the people," but they found their laws were struck down by the courts as unconstitutional. People in New York still drink Big Gulp soda drinks.

Good hygiene is similar to good health. Wash your hands, isolate from other people when sick " (e.g. 'dis-ease' means 'not at ease'), practice good hygiene, and trust God.  Those are the rules. The government mandating laws to force people into good hygiene is unconstitutional, just like the government mandating laws to force people into good health.

Some vocal administrators and doctors in Enid's medical establishment (not all), as well as some Garfield County public health department leaders, have convinced Enid's mayor and city council leaders to place a "mask mandate" (law) on the agenda for Enid's City Council meeting this Tuesday night, December 1, 2020, the third time some have attempted to pass a mask mandate in Enid. The first two attempts failed. Medical personnel should not be allowed to run the city government. 

A well-run city must think of private businesses, personal freedoms, and a host of other practical considerations that keep a city running smoothly. 

For example, Enid is hosting Enid Lights Up the Plains tonight, November 27, 2020, with an estimated 10,000 people coming downtown. The mayor and city council are all for the event, sponsored by Mainstreet Enid and the city of Enid. The editorial in today's city newspaper encouraged people to wear a mask and to socially distance. This is the same paper that has been pushing for a mask mandate for months. I'm all for attempting to persuade people to wear masks for their good health.  Some people are absolutely convinced wearing a mask is not good for their health.  They should be free to make an individual hygiene choice like they are free to make an individual health choice (e.g., drinking a Big Gulp soda). Unenforceable and unconstitutional municipal laws do much damage to the citizenry. The civic government should encourage and persuade citizens to practice good hygiene, never mandate it.

If it seems ironic that Enid city officials (the mayor and city council) will allow 10,000 people downtown three days before considering for the third time a mask mandate, it is. There are other considerations for city officials, as there should be. Tonight,  restaurants will be full, tax revenues will be collected, and the people of Enid will enjoy a Christmas celebration three days before the city council considers mandating masks. If persuading people to wear a mask, keep social distance, and wash one's hands is good enough for Enid Lights Up the Plains, then it should be good enough for the remainder of the year.

A leading Garfield Public Health official advocating city officials to force wearing masks by legal mandate is personally practicing persuasion at the businesses she and her husband own, not mandates. If persuasion is good enough for a private business owner who happens to be Enid's leading public health official, then it ought to be good enough for the entire city. 

But those who are vocally advocating laws mandating masks and cynical toward those who choose not to force others into personal hygiene practices, usually take the approach of a well-intentioned but logically absurd letter-to-the-editor in today's Enid paper.
"It has become obvious by the ever-increasing number of Covid-19 cases in Enid and Garfield County that a voluntary mask recommendation is not working. To our mayor and city council: Please fulfill your duties to protect the citizens of Enid and vote for a mandate now."
The government can't be in the business of forcing people not to drink Big Gulps and to wear masks. It's unconstitutional. Persuade the people on the merits. Trust the people with the measures. 

Cities and states with the strictest lock-down laws and mask mandates in place since the spring are seeing their Covid-19 cases increase as well. Michigan, a state with stringent laws mandating personal hygiene, sees a rate case increase 30 times higher than Oklahoma, which has no state mask mandate.

If it is said, "But our hospitals are full." Yes, they are. It's a tough time right now for hospitals, and it's going to get tougher. The cities with mask mandates and lockdowns have full hospitals too. How do you think people in nursing homes get Covid-19? How do you think people who check into hospitals without Covid-19 get Covid-19 while in the hospital?  You can't stop its spread. Attempting to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 is a great idea. Mitigating it isn't as simple as you'd like to make it. Locking down cities and encroaching on citizens does more harm than good. If we are rightly concerned for hospitals at this time, set some revenue aside for nurses who are overworked and pay them public health bonuses, continue to persuade citizens to practice good hygiene, and tell the truth that hundreds of thousands of people are going to get sick, but 99.6 percent will recover after being knocked for a loop physically. And consider giving some good, cheap drugs to treat Covid-19 instead of banning them, hoping for a vaccine. Masks are not a magic potion creating more hospital space. 

Finally, some say, "But if you refuse to mandate masks, you'll kill people! How heartless! How tragic! More people are going to die because you don't force everyone to wear a mask."

Those statements are not even close to the truth.

The prestigious Johns Hopkins Medical Center recently released a study that showed some startling facts (read it for yourself). Listen to the leading conclusion of these scientists, epidemiologists, and public health experts, a conclusion based upon their exhaustive research: 
"These data analyses suggest that in contrast to most people’s assumptions, the number of deaths by COVID-19 is not alarming. In fact, Covid-19 has relatively no effect on deaths in the United States."

Before you state categorically, "more people will die without a mask mandate," you better do your research.  

Enid, Oklahoma, is an exceptional place to live. I want to encourage people to practice good health and good hygiene. But I want our government to never allow public health officials, hospitalists, or others in the medical profession to make decisions for private businesses, public corporations, non-profits,  and individual citizens. 

There's a great deal at stake next Tuesday night, and the people of Enid, Oklahoma, will take seriously the hypocrisy of city leaders and public health officials, the unconstitutional attempt to mandate individual hygiene, and the often-stated "trust the medical experts" mantra when even the medical experts don't agree among themselves. Persuade the people and trust the people. Or else be recalled by the people. 

If you allow an unconstitutional mandate for a mask, the government will pass an unconstitutional law mandating a vaccine. 

If you allow an unconstitutional mandate for a vaccine, the government will then pass an unconstitutional law forbidding travel without a vaccine.

If you allow an unconstitutional law forbidding travel, then the government will pass a law tracking citizens for "the good of public health."

If you allow an unconstitutional law tracking U.S. citizens, then you are no longer free.

It all begins next Tuesday night. 

Let your city leaders know you wish them to persuade you and trust you, not mandate you and control you.

For the good of Enid, America. 

Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Growing Hostility Toward Christianity in the USA: Tell Your Kids of Thanksgiving Before It's Too Late

Archbishop Bashar Warda, a Chaldean Catholic bishop living in Erbil, Iraq, delivered a chilling message this week to the fifth annual New York-based conference on international religious liberty sponsored by the Anglosphere Society.

Bishop Warda's warning came in his talk entitled Act in Time: Protecting Imperiled Christians in Ancient and Other Lands. He told the assembly of his fear as he watches the growing hostility toward the Christian religion - in the United States. Here is a man living in an area squeezed by radical Muslims and his greatest fear is for the people of the United States.

It's time for us to do something about the persecution of Christianity in our own country before it's too late.  

Let's start with the United States holiday called Thanksgiving.

400 years ago, in September 1620, the Pilgrims came to America. Next year (2021) will be the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving Day celebration in America.

The Pilgrims were Christian people. After purchasing land from the Native Americans and building friendships with them, the Pilgrims welcomed their new friends to a banquet in November 1621 where they gave thanks to Jesus Christ for His provision and protection. 

The Pilgrims undoubtedly prayed at the 1621 harvest feast, now called the First Thanksgiving. However, their Thanksgiving prayers were spontaneous and the exact words were not recorded. A typical prayer might be:
"O Lord our God and heavenly Father, which of Thy unspeakable mercy towards us, hast provided meate and drinke for the nourishment of our weake bodies. Grant us peace to use them reverently, as from Thy hands, with thankful hearts: let Thy blessing rest upon these Thy good creatures, to our comfort and sustentation: and grant we humbly beseech Thee, good Lord, that as we doe hunger and thirst for this food of our bodies, so our soules may earnestly long after the food of eternal life, through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, Amen.
During the Revolutionary War, in tribute to those first Pilgrims, Samuel Adams and the Continental Congress voted into law the following one-sentence, 360-word Thanksgiving proclamation, expressing the sentiments of an entire nation:
“Forasmuch as it is the indispensable duty of all men to adore the superintending providence of Almighty God; to acknowledge with gratitude their obligation to him for benefits received…together with penitent confession of their sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor; and their humble and earnest supplications that it may please God through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance…it is therefore recommended…to set apart Thursday the eighteenth day of December next, for solemn thanksgiving and praise, that with one heart and one voice the good people may express the grateful feeling of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their Divine Benefactor…acknowledging with gratitude their obligations to Him for benefits received….To prosper the means of religion, for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth ‘in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost’.”
The Continental Congress law passed the above mandate exactly 183 years after the first Pilgrim Thanksgiving Day. Our Founding Fathers officially recognized the day by proclamation of the Constitutional government. 

Thanksgiving Day became a national November holiday during the height of the Civil War in the year 1863. President Abraham Lincoln asked in November 1863 that Americans pray to God and request Him to “commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife” and to “heal the wounds of the nation.” President Lincoln signed a bill proclaiming Thanksgiving Day as a national holiday to be celebrated the last Thursday of November.

Americans have celebrated this special Christian holiday in November ever since, except for a brief two-year interlude when President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving  Day up a week in 1939 in an attempt to spur retail sales during the Great Depression. There's always trouble in a culture when a desire for money supersedes moral principles. Americans derided Roosevelt for moving America's sacred holiday by calling it Franksgiving, so in 1941 President Roosevelt reluctantly signed a bill making permanent the Thanksgiving Day holiday the fourth Thursday in November.

Now there are members of the United States Congress, including Minnesota's Muslim US Representative Ilhan Omar and New York's Marxist US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who wish to do away with Thanksgiving and punish anyone who dares to honor the Judeo-Christian heritage of America. 

These people are not American patriots, and they wish to destroy our country by canceling culture. lhan Omar, a devout Muslim, recently mocked  Arkansas U.S. Senator Tom Cotton. Senator Cotton gave an incredible speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, paying respect and honor to the 400th Anniversary of the Pilgrims landing in America and to America's Thanksgiving Holiday, and to the Christian faith. 

Muslim Representative Ilhan Omar went public in her criticism of Senator Cotton's moving tribute to Christianity's roots in America by tweeting this:


The persecution of Christianity is coming from positions of power in government. It's time citizens of the United States intervene before it is too late. 

I will be doing my part throughout the next year to cause Americans to realize that American exceptionalism is due to the Judeo-Christian heritage that some wish to erase.

We do not want to be the generation that American history books later record as the generation that lost the Republic to socialism, marxism, and humanism because we refused to heed Bishop Warda's warning of protecting the Christian faith from those who seek to destroy it.