During the pandemic lockdown, I occasionally drive my wife to the store. While she shops, I stay in the car, listen to the radio, and watch people. It sounds boring and it can be, but my compromised immune system requires me to avoid people during the pandemic. So, I watch and listen.

On my most recent driving excursion, I heard the Democrat mayor of Los Angeles, Eric Garcetti, relax some of the COVID-19 restrictions he had imposed upon business and the movement of citizens in the city. With that, he said, “let's continue to earn this freedom.”

This started a rant to my wife as we drove home. My discomfort with the mayor’s declaration stems from the implicit statement that freedom is earned. If freedom is earned then who do we earn it from? The only authority that could grant such freedom is some level of government but, we as Americans have repeatedly fought against the idea that any level of government holds supreme political power or sovereignty. In the United States, citizens rule under the one and only sovereign authority.

Many might think of the constitution, and while it is the highest law in our nation, it is not sovereign. In the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers stated that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. – That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ….”

So, to put that idea in modern, less formal, phrasing, God has given us rights that cannot be taken away. To ensure those rights are protected, the people create governments and those governments get their power from the people.

It’s both profound and that simple.

At this point, we passed the billboard shown here and I knew I would be writing about the topic.  

Under the American system, Eric Garcetti was elected neither to grant nor take away freedom, but only to administer and protect it. I can almost hear someone say, “But during this time of COVID-19, Garcetti and many other politicians have taken away freedoms and now they are giving it back.”

If a burglar breaks in and takes your television do you lose ownership of the device? No, of course not. You lose possession of it, not ownership. However, the governors of many states seem to believe they own the Bill of Rights. They do not. They have taken what they do not own and are no better than a thief in the night.