[Author]by Alex Newman
New American
[/Author]
With estimates suggesting more than 800 people have died from the ongoing Ebola outbreak sweeping across West Africa, concerns are spreading in the United States about how federal and state authorities would react if — or when — a life-threatening virus such as Ebola begins spreading domestically. Global responses to the outbreak are also stirring fears. Considering the militarization of swine flu preparations five years ago, there is plenty of cause for alarm, experts say. Some analysts and commentators have even warned that the stage is being set for medical tyranny as an American infected with Ebola comes to the U.S. for treatment.
The United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) is also making waves with its controversial global preparations. Already, the planetary outfit claims to be “coordinating” a $100 million planetary response with its member governments.
In the United States, draconian-sounding preparations are being made, too, and many have been in place for years. In an amendment to “Executive Order” 13295 signed last week, Obama, expanding on a previous order, has already purported to grant his administration vast powers to detain Americans suspected of harboring a “respiratory illness.”
On July 31, responding to news about the spread of Ebola, Obama modified a George W. Bush-era “executive order” signed in 2003. That unconstitutional decree was supposedly aimed at “providing for the apprehension, detention, or conditional release of individuals to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of suspected communicable diseases.” Under that scheme, the federal government would be allowed to detain people suspected of harboring a broad list of diseases including cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis, smallpox, yellow fever, SARS, Ebola, and more.
The order signed by Obama last week modified one subsection of Bush’s original executive order. In essence, it drastically widens the net in terms of Americans who could be detained. Under Bush, subsection B dealt only with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS. Obama’s amendment allows the feds to detain anyone who displays signs of “diseases that are associated with fever and signs and symptoms of pneumonia or other respiratory illness” that might cause a pandemic or lead to “mortality or serious morbidity if not properly controlled.” Only the flu is exempt.
Obama’s executive order references section 361 of the Public Health Service Act. On its website, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claimed that statute, originally passed in 1944, “clearly established the federal government’s quarantine authority for the first time.” The Constitution never established it. Indeed, critics say the statute represents a blatantly unconstitutional power grab that is totalitarian in scope. For instance, the scheme purports to allow the federal government to “apprehend” and “detain” individuals suspected of infection for “such time and in such manner as may be reasonably necessary.”
In other words, a bureaucrat could deprive a U.S. citizen of his unalienable rights — for as long as said bureaucrat considers necessary — on the mere suspicion that the person being detained has been in contact some disease. Contrast the purported federal authorities under the statute with the plain language in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which outright prohibits the deprivation of liberty without due process of law — a timeless and essential principle enshrined in the Magna Carta almost 800 years ago. State constitutions across America recognize those fundamental rights as well.
Even the military could become involved. In fact, in 2009 amid the wildly overblown swine-flu hysteria, the Obama administration was even preparing for potentially deploying the military on U.S. soil.
Among other schemes, the law purports to give public health officials the authority to mandate vaccines and enforce involuntary quarantines in the event of an emergency declaration. It would also force people to submit to medical exams and treatment decreed by authorities against their will, violate patient privacy, attack private-property rights, threaten medical professionals, mobilize troops to enforce government decrees, ration everything from food and gasoline to firearms, and much more.
Americans hoping that the courts might step in to protect their rights in the event of medical tyranny will likely be disappointed, according to experts. “Judges will not stand in the way of emergency actions taken to protect the public from a clear and present danger, and if they do, the state appeals court will overturn their rulings in a matter of hours,” explained Louisiana State University director of the program in law, science, and public health, Edward Richards, and Dr. Katherine Rathbun. “The history of judicial restraint on emergency powers is one of blind obedience to civil and military authority.”
CDC boss Thomas Frieden claimed recently that a widespread Ebola outbreak in the United States was “not in the cards.” One of the reasons for that, he suggested, is that the federal agency has amassed broad powers in case disease does strike. “We have quarantine stations at all the major ports of entry,” Frieden told reporters.
There can be no doubt that Ebola is a dangerous and frightening disease — it kills an estimated 90 percent of its victims, and there is currently no cure. However, unconstitutional government scheming allegedly designed to deal with the virus and other communicable diseases ought to be at least as alarming to Americans. Indeed, the potential for abuse, tyranny, and wanton constitutional violations under a declared “emergency” is hard to emphasize strongly enough. Machinations by the dictator-dominated UN could be even worse.
Unrestrained governments, which murdered hundreds of millions of innocent people in the last century alone, as well as epidemics, have both proven to be among the deadliest threats to humanity. For the sake of life and liberty, though, Americans must ensure that their officials do not trample on the Constitution under the guise of a real, manufactured, or imagined emergency — whether it be an Ebola outbreak or anything else. There are plenty of ways to protect public health without resorting to tyranny. Securing the Southern border would be a good first step.
(Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is currently based in Europe).
