I’ve heard all the warnings about how bad things would be if Sununu hadn’t been elected, and how bad they will be if a Democrat ends up in the governor’s office. But I simply can’t cast a vote for someone who says: ‘I believe that public health trumps everything’. Because if you take that seriously, it means that he does not believe in rights.
Does public health trump the right to worship? In Sununu’s mind, it does.
Does it trump the right to keep and bear arms? In Sununu’s mind, it does. (He graciously designated gun stores as ‘essential businesses’, but in doing that, he made it clear that he could have designated them as non-essential.)
Does it trump the right to freedom of association? To voluntary exchange of goods and services? Freedom of speech? Freedom of travel?
Does it trump the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
Even if there is some particular right that he hasn’t yet specifically curtailed through an emergency order, look again at what he said: ‘I believe that public health trumps everything.’
Everything.
Comrade Volinsky might phrase it a little differently — speaking, perhaps, of ‘the common good’ rather than ‘public health’. But what Comrade Sununu just announced is that there is no fundamental difference between their views of the proper relationship between government and the governed. And the word that most accurately describes that view is husbandry.
