By Melissa Blasek
Over the past several weeks, grassroots activists have called on the Legislature to meet in special session to thwart mandates for masking our children at school and mandates for vaccinations just to make a living.
While many representatives support the effort, there is also bipartisan resistance. This is to be expected, because today’s issues cannot be labeled “Democrat” or “Republican.” A divide has formed between those who accept permanent biosecurity as an acceptable way of life and those who believe human freedom is also the best way to preserve life.
The Legislature has been called to exercise its Constitutional role to defend the very essence of human liberty, but some of its members have chosen to sabotage the effort to stop those who wish to sacrifice liberty for a perceived sense of safety or to exploit the fear and confusion of the people to preserve their own interests.
School mask mandates, testing, quarantines, and social distancing fights have reached a fever pitch over the past several weeks as parents have shown up in droves to school board meetings. Polling across the state shows that parents support optional masking, but risk-averse school boards have chosen to ignore the will of the voters. While there will be repercussions at the next election for ignoring the people and blindly following guidance from unelected bureaucrats, the fact remains that a generation of children will bear the brunt of this abuse of power that flies in the face of science and reason.
Some lawmakers argue that the Legislature cannot prohibit mask mandates in schools because this violates the idea of “local control,” but there is no basis for this thought. New Hampshire is not a home rule state, which means we do not have true “local control” by design. According to our state Constitution, the Legislature is the “supreme legislative authority.”
This means that our elected representatives and senators vote to delegate authority to the school boards based on what is good for the whole state. The only reason a school board might have the power to create a mandate is because the Legislature has granted this authority by law. That being said, the Legislature never has and never should grant localities unlimited authority. It is fully within the power of the Legislature to change the parameters of local limits when such a change is needed like it is today.
Other lawmakers want to pass the responsibility to Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, calling on him to act by fiat rule. But Commissioner Edelblut does not have rule making authority on this matter, and anything he might say would only be a matter of expressed opinion. Even if he did have such authority, do we really want to get in the practice of letting one person control everything from a corner office? Politicians love to hide behind the bureaucrats, not recognizing the harm they are causing to our government of, by, and for the people.
Even school boards have blindly sighted CDC guidelines rather than open an honest discussion with the experts in the field and the people who elect them and send their children to the public schools they govern. This is Capitol Hill behavior. In Washington, politicians routinely write vague laws providing broad rule making authority to bureaucrats so they can straddle the political fence. New Hampshire isn’t immune to this swamp-like mentality, because it can be politically expedient. But this slimy behavior has got to stop. It is time for politicians to take a stand for the people they represent. If your senator or representative isn’t willing to pass state law to protect your children from unscientific and arbitrary biosecurity measures, they do not deserve your vote.
Vaccine mandates are also creating panic as they sweep across the United States like a toxic wave, ready to topple every industry. Why anybody would want to mandate an experimental vaccine that does not stop transmission and only prevents serious outcomes is beyond understanding, but decades of crony capitalism with big pharma and recent government-driven Covid hysteria created the perfect storm of authoritarianism.
No one has successfully sued a company for failing to protect them from a virus, but corporate America is using the liability bogeyman to force biosecurity measures on the workforce. When coupled with intense pressure from an out-of-control Biden Administration, America is facing a corporate fascist nightmare where politicians are now using businesses to infringe on the individual right to bodily autonomy while keeping their hands clean.
Big government is removing all semblance of informed consent for this medical intervention by pushing for mandates as terms of employment. Even in New Hampshire, medical facilities changed the terms of employment as a bloc to avoid free-market employment outcomes. This collusion was largely made possible by Obamacare, which forced medicine to be consolidated and practically ended independent medicine.
Every part of the Covid response is wrong. This is a government-created problem working its way through heavily regulated industries and manifesting itself in every facet of our lives. While the primary purpose of government is to protect the rights of the people, it is now colluding with big business to violate rights with intention. It is up to our elected officials to call off this destructive insanity and bring the people back together in the spirit of freedom. It is the responsibility of the Legislature to protect people from such violation of their fundamental rights, and it matters not whether the bad actors are in the public or private sector. It’s time for the law to protect individual rights to bodily autonomy when it’s clear that government bureaucrats are acting through the hands of private employers.
The Legislature in New Hampshire has the authority to call a special session to handle extraordinary and emergency situations, and there could not be a more pressing matter than the Covid fascism that is plaguing our land. There is an opportunity right now to restore human freedom in New Hampshire before we find ourselves in yet another dark time of coercion and compliance. Temporary perceived safety does not lead to freedom; it can only lead to death.
