I want to share a perspective or two about the corona-crisis we are going through as a nation and in the state of Washington. It starts with the fundamentals.

If you were a business consultant called in to help a failing business, you might not know where to start, but I’ll give you a tip. Start by asking and answering this question: What is the purpose of this business or activity? What SHOULD it be trying to do? Once you’ve got that question answered and you have a clear statement of its purpose, then spend some time envisioning and working out how that business or activity should look, and how it would be IF it was dynamically fulfilling its purpose. This is called envisioning or establishing the IDEAL SCENE for that business or activity; properly done it will always be a manifestation of the PURPOSE of the business or activity.

Now, once you have that IDEAL SCENE established, then confront and observe the business or activity so you can see the EXISTING SCENE. This is accomplished mostly by looking and observation of the business as it now exists in real time; looking at its statistics, books and so on. Once you have the existing scene duplicated, simply compare it to the IDEAL SCENE you’ve worked out, with an eye toward locating the most major departure in the EXISTING SCENE from the IDEAL SCENE. Once determined, this will give you the prime target of what to correct or handle in that business to move it from the existing scene closer to the Ideal Scene. There is a bit more to this, and some investigatory technology involved that one should learn, but in the above you have the key rudiments of it.

Now, what does all this have to with the current corona-crisis? Well, applying the above to the U.S. government, you would first divine the purpose of the government, and that is rather simply answered. The two prime founding documents of the United States answer this question as follows:

“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…” Declaration of Independence

and…

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America…” Preamble to US Constitution

Within the above documents we find the PURPOSE of the U.S. government. Now, based on this purpose, what should that government be doing? In other words, what is the Ideal Scene of the government based on that purpose? Obviously that government majorly exists to secure and protect the RIGHTS of its citizens, as is overtly stated in the Declaration and as is strongly implied in the “establish Justice” and “secure the blessings of liberty” clauses of the Constitution. The government, then, in all its functions, should be engaged in actions that accomplish this, and that Ideal Scene might be stated as follows:

“an established governmental entity that functions to preserve the natural rights and liberties of its citizens, (as described in the Bill of Rights) protect them from exterior attack, passes laws that promote their general welfare in alignment with these rights, all to the end of facilitating for its citizens their pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness.”

That might not be a perfect statement of the Ideal Scene of our government, but it is pretty close and will do for our purposes here.

Now, confront the existing scene. Our governments, both Federal and State, have chosen courses of action in handling this corona-crisis that have trashed our First Amendment rights to peaceably assemble, our freedom to practice our religions and even indirectly our freedom of speech. Obviously handling a pandemic like this requires valid scientific data (which has been suspect in this crisis) and actions based on that data, but officers of government who understand what they are there for would never suspend the rights of the vast majority of citizens who are not ill, because of the few who are ill. They would never quarantine the vast majority who are not sick. Obviously, that flies in the face of their purpose as an officer of government, if they only knew it. As some others have pointed out, the United States is not China or Russia; the people here don’t exist for the benefit of government, in the US it’s the other way around. In this crisis, our governments’ actions have been 180 degrees reverse of what they should have been. The sick should be treated and quarantined, obviously, but those not sick, perhaps appropriately cautioned and instructed, should be protected in their natural rights and allowed to carry on with their pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness.

And that, my friends, illustrates what the real problem is, based on their actions, with our government leaders. By observation alone, they don’t know the primary reason they are there and the primary purpose of government; or they know it, but are in Treason to it as their legitimate function, for some reason so far unstated.

The last point I am going to make here is simply this: to be a real citizen of this country requires courage. It takes courage to choose your liberty over the possibility of illness; to choose your freedom when confronted with the possibility of encroaching tyranny. Therein, I think, lies the real danger in this crisis. Not that our governments and leaders have lost sight of why they are there, as bad as that is, but that we as citizens no longer have the courage to do what it takes to remind them.

And in that I hope I’m wrong…

Copyright © 2020

By Mark Arnold

All Rights Reserved