Dakota Beacon

An Open Letter to the Minnesota state legislature:

Yesterday I had a disturbing conversation with a woman I have known for years.  She works as a night manager at the local Hugo’s grocery store.  I had gone to the store for a money order and, finding it impossible to speak and breathe at the same time through my face covering, I pullied it down to make my request clear as to the amount of the money order (a matter of significant importance).  The young girl behind the counter became very “athoritarian” and would not communicate with me except to say my face covering needed to be pulled up.  Finally, I decided to go elsewhere for my money order - not that difficult.  It just meant another trip back to Grand Forks, which delayed other plans.

The conversation which I found disturbing was when the manager followed me out.  I had dropped something and she came after me to return it.  After thanking her, she went about assuring me “it wasn’t the store” - it was the “law”.  Governor Walz had made this the law and they (the store employees) were forced to comply.  I replied that if I were governor perhaps I would decree that people could not drive their cars to the grocery stores, that they must crawl instead - to save the planet from carbon dioxide emissions.  Would the people comply with this?  I don’t hold these workers responsible, except for their sheep-like compliance with unreasonable edicts.

I asked her what the legislature was for if the governor is now making the laws.  She had no answer for that, just that if they wanted their paycheck they must do what their employer said, and their employer, “Margo”, was making this a very big point.  We took our leave.

It was disheartening and sad to hear an adult woman, a lady who has worked hard all her life, now supporting a husband with disabilities and herself, a good person, cowed by some order proclaimed by a governor heady with assumed power.

What is the source of this belief in the omnipotence of this governor?  Apparently, some ill-advised and not-to-prescient legislature made “emergency powers” available to a governor in times of “disaster”.  On the surface this might seem a reasonable provision.  At the time it was written perhaps we were all concerned about nuclear disaster, forest fires, who knows what.  The thing about a disaster is that it is not a permanent fixture, not a “new normal”.  If we determine that this epidemic of flu is to continue, as many experts warn us, then we need to stop allowing it be be defined as an “emergency”.  

Minnesota has plenty of legitimate emergencies, most of them brought upon our citizens through failed leadership.  The horrendous damage done, not only to the Twin Cities and surrounding area, but across our entire nation, from coast to coastby rioting , was triggered by failed leadership in Minneapolilis.  Had the policies in hiring, training, discipline and retention of police officers in that city been responsible and reasonable, we might have had a very different summer in America.  We did, indeed, have an emergency - one directly of the making and nurture of a totally inept and failed leadership, in part, that of the governor.

COVID 19, on the other hand, is a sickness (I would say not only a physical sickness, but increasingly a mental illness).  No one in authority seems to have any answers.  There is presently a great division of opinion over the best ways to deal with it and with the economic disaster it has fueled.  All summer we have seen the blight of overreach of mayors and governors.  These people have acted like Napoleon . . . or Mao.  It seems very odd that while violence in the name of “protest” is smiled upon by these people, they have really beefed up their dictatorial tendencies in the cavalier closing of businesses, ordering citizens around like children, mandating masks, threatening fines and citations, twisting the arms of businesses to comply with whatever bizarre and capricious demand they take a notion to force upon us.  Governor Walz is one of those despotic governors.  They don’t need or want a legislature to meddle with their perception of totalitarian power.

In the case of Minnesota, this silly and archaic structure of separation of powers is gotten around by calling the virus an “emergency”.  You, as a state legislator, need not report to work any longer.  Until further notice we need only rely on the dictates of Governor Walz.  You can see - or you should be able to see - where this can ultimately lead.  The Soviets had a vestigial organ called the Politburo.  It was the “Central Committee” and it was supposed to make policy.  In fact, it simply rubber-stamped the edicts of the current premier until at some point another strongman came along and pushed hinm from the position of power and took over.  Then the Politburo rubber-stamped his policies.  We see this in Beijing.  I don’t know how many times I have seen the huge room where the Chinese politburo meets.  It is full of seemingly important people, all clapping politely when Xi Jinping strides across the floor against a background of enormous, pretentiously draped flags.  Does any of them counter Xi’s messages to them?  Don’t be silly.  When his time comes to disappear it won’t be by a vote of the people.  This is the kind of power we are seeing our state of Minnesota devolve into if our state legislature is nothing but a pretence or a rubber-stamping, inoperable, moot vestige of a defunct democratic system.

Of course the “pandemic” has had a terrible health impact.  So have diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer and alzheimers.  No one makes light of this.  However, we must cease to call this a public “emergency”.  Why?  Because, like diabetes and cancer, it is not going to simply go away at some point.  This “emergency” has been on-going since February.  The foolish, ineffective and off-balance response by government has added economic crisis to the impact of the illness itself and distracted our government and our people from the important issues which have been crying out for attention.  Is this accidental?  It hardly seems likely.  Why?  Because a resoned, constructive and dispassionate response, which should be the expectation, would have given the floor to unrestricted debate and discussion among those who might have conflicting or at least different ideas on how best to minimize the impact of the disease on our people as well as our economy.  If a drug showed promise it would have been tried, subject to caution as to side-effects.  If doctors differed on treatment they would all have been heard.  If a given response, such as staying out of massive crowds is advisable, it would not have the caveat that some massive crowds are “acceptable” and even encouraged and protected, while other massive crowds are to be broken up and dispersed, perhaps fined and punished.  If wearing face masks for long periods of time on a regular basis posed health risks of their own, these risks would be explored without concern for political correctness or virtue signalling.  If closing businesses creates widespread and extreme hardship and loss, this would be a part of the conversation.  There would not be sacred cows like a Dr. Anthony Fauci, a man whose own contribution to this virus attack should have placed him in the “persona non grata” column, would not be looked to for all the answers as a sort of “Grand Vizier”.  At best he might be tolerated as one among many voices.  

Man could be said to live in a perpetual state of “emergency” if this disease is such. We have been told by most of the “experts” that it is here to stay.   In that case we might as well close up the legislature, because we no longer have need of a legislative body to make our laws.   What is left to do other than by the all-powerful governor, can probably be handled by little regional offices.  Much of our law is by agency anyway.  The legislature is more and more a relic of when people took part in their own governance - another abdication made long ago by our legislatures at various levels.  

We are at a turning point in Minnesota.  If we stand by and permit dictatorial powers in the office of governor for anything he deems an “emergency” we have abandoned separation of powers and legislative relevance.  I am asking you, as a member of this legislature, to act to make your job relevant again in Minnesota.  Please work actively and with some urgency to stop the deadly erosion of our government.  Surely there must be many in the state legislature who could band together to stop this.  Throughout history tyrants have risen and liberty has been lost by failure to act when it could have made a difference.

The mental state of the people of this state - their resigned, sheep-like attitude of subjugation - is a product of years of failure by the legislature - your body of elected representatives of the people - to do its job, to question a governor’s dictatorial pronouncements of “law”.  You - the legislature - have failed them in not providing leadership and upholding the state constitution which limits a governor’s power.  The result, in the present case, is a “law” requiring use of a very unhealthy face covering.  It is not a matter of opinion, but of fact, that if you re-breathe what you have exhaled all day long (as in the case of workers) you are inhaling toxins and are not getting sufficient oxygen.  If you wear a mask that does not nearly suffocate you, you are not protecting anyone.  

The young lady who challenged me and caused me to decide to go to North Dakota to do business (which I will be doing from now on, rather than support East Grand Forks businesses) would have no way to know whether the person she was ordering about had a heart condition or a breathing problem such as asthma.  Some people react very badly to low oxygen intake.  She is but a store clerk - she would not know.  Yet this governor’s “law”, as it’s called, empowers her to act like a lower-level functionary of the Chinese Communist Party.  Is this healthy - either in  terms of physical or spiritual or civic health?  

The reaction of the person - a really wonderful lady, by the way - who said that no one has a choice because the governor just made it “law” should speak volumes to you, as a serious participant in our state government.  What do you say?  Can we better define “emergency” so that its acute phase is not six months long with no end in sight?  Doesn’t this effectively end representative government and separation of powers?  I would have to conclude that it does.  I hope you will take some kind of forthright action in cooperation with others in the legislature.  Over the past several months we have seen extraordinary curtailment of our constitutional and God-given rights - It has all been in the name of “public good”, of “science” and it has all been assumed to be “temporary”.  Now many are seeing that this is not the case.   Throughout history, dictators have assumed power “temporarily” and for the “public good” and usually under the guise of “emergency measures”.  It seldom works out.  George Washington and Cincinnatus stood out from the rest of history for refusing the crown.  

It is time to end this.  We are seeing what is behind the curtain.  It is up to you as our elected representative, to take action to stop this gross abuse of power.  By the same reasoning as the dictates about business closure and mask wearing “for the public good” in an “emergency”, we could one day in the not-distant future, see a ban on private automobiles, on gun ownership, on air conditioning, on boat ownership, on vacation homes or even single-family homes, on owning pets.  Or, as in China, a limit on the number of children.  There is really no limit to where this could go.  You are positioned to call a halt now, while it is still possible.

Please send a copy of this letter to at least two of your colleagues for their consideration.  I welcome your thoughts.

Sincerely,

Sally Morris