- Joined
- Apr 3, 2019
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- Alaska (61.5°N, -149°W)
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- Conservative
Actually, there is something in the US Constitution that empowers officials to deprive you of your freedom to travel. However, the US Constitution requires those government officials to provide you with due process of law BEFORE they deprive you of your freedoms.My take is that there is nothing in the Constitution that empowers officials to deprive me of my freedom to travel, and there is nothing in the Constitution that guarantees my right to survive a disease if I catch it. For the most part, we are a nation that needs to volunteer to rise to the occasion and offer to make personal sacrifices for the common good.
That being said, if everyone had good judgment, we wouldn't need laws to say what's in or out of bounds for the greater societal good. Unfortunately most of the country are individuals first, Americans second (or third, fourth, ...) so as a collective population we're going to do some boneheaded things collectively. For the most part I think this has worked out in our favor but the pandemic clearly shows the failing of a culture that says it loves America but generally isn't willing to sacrifice, even voluntarily, for it.
It is one of those individual rights that everyone in the US is afforded. If government wishes to deprive anyone of their life, liberty, or property they must first provide evidence in a court of law that proves beyond a reasonable doubt the accused individual is guilty.
Which means that government may forcibly require someone to be quarantined if they provide evidence in a court of law that proves beyond a reasonable doubt the accused individual is infected, contagious, and a threat to the public. An example of this already happened in the case of Typhoid Mary. She appeared before the court on three separate occasions before she was deprived of her liberty for the rest of her life and forcibly quarantined. She was afforded her constitutionally protected right of due process.
All state-wide mandates violate the Due Process Clause of the US Constitution.