Cherie Zaslawsky
Never in America—right?
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By Cherie Zaslawsky
April 20, 2021

In a recent broadcast, Tucker Carlson featured a story destined to send shockwaves throughout America. In discussing Canada’s new policy of mandatory detention of people who test positive for Covid in “government facilities,” Tucker referred to these “facilities” as “internment camps.” He’s right, of course, and using the correct terminology brings the euphemistically camouflaged truth out into the open.

But could something like this be done in America?

The CDC’s Alphabet Soup

Well, if you go to the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) website and look up Legal Authorities for Isolation and Quarantine, you may be surprised by what you find under the heading of Federal Law: The federal government derives its authority for isolation and quarantine from the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

According to the Heritage Foundation, “Over the course of the last decades, the Commerce Clause has been used as a primary source for the regulatory expansion of the national government.” It seems the Commerce Clause could well win a popularity contest as the most often used rationale for unconstitutional shenanigans. So let’s take a good look at it.

Hmmm…. In my copy of the Constitution, the “Commerce Clause,” as an item in what is essentially a bulleted list, reads thus: “The Congress shall have the power…to regulate commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.”

Funny, I don’t see anything there about running a medical dictatorship, depriving citizens of their rights and liberty through mandatory “lockdowns,” “house arrests” or quarantines, let alone forced isolation of American citizens in FEMA camps and the like.

That part must have been discovered in a penumbra or in emanations, along with most other tyrannical usurpations of our rights, as they were originally laid out by the Founders in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence. That’s independence not only of our nation, but of We the People as sovereign individuals.

Draconian Governmental Authority over Public Health

Perhaps our illustrious lawmakers figured that We the Pesky People might see through this sham, so they covered their tracks in the US Code, as follows: Under section 361 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S. Code § 264), the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services is authorized to take measures to prevent the entry and spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the United States and between states.

And here’s the clincher: The authority for carrying out these functions on a daily basis has been delegated to the CDC.

So there you have it—three short steps to get out from under the protection of the Constitution, and into the waiting arms and needles and potential internment camps of the CDC.

By the way, many states have also lavished similar totalitarian powers on themselves—witness Governor Gavin Newsom’s destruction of California under the color of the California Emergency Services Act. And guess who gets to define what an emergency is, or when it ends…if ever? In fact, the CDC’s website states that: “States have police power functions to protect the health, safety, and welfare of persons within their borders. To control the spread of disease within their borders, states have laws to enforce the use of isolation and quarantine.” Got it?

Reading further in the CDC website’s entry on Quarantine and Isolation, we find this:

The CDC’s Role

Under 42 Code of Federal Regulations parts 70 and 71, CDC is authorized to detain, medically examine, and release persons arriving into the United States and traveling between states who are suspected of carrying these communicable diseases. (Emphasis mine)

As part of its federal authority, CDC routinely monitors persons arriving at U.S. land border crossings and passengers and crew arriving at U.S. ports of entry for signs or symptoms of communicable diseases.

So how’s the CDC doing at our southern border? Are they medically examining the thousands of Covid-positive illegal aliens Biden’s welcoming with open arms? What other communicable diseases has the CDC found among the hordes of unwashed migrants? That’s odd…I don’t remember CNN or MSNBC et al. reporting about them. I guess the CDC is too busy mandating social distancing and face masks and vaccine recommendations to America citizens to deal with the migrant invasion.

But let’s keep parsing the CDC’s legal mandate. The phrase above that should frighten and outrage every legal American citizen pertaining to the CDC’s role under Code 42 is, of course, this one: “authorized to detain.” Hmmm… to whom does this apply? Under what circumstances? Does it apply to travelers returning home to the U.S.? To Americans crossing state lines?

How about to all of us? Apparently, we have it worse than the Canadians, since they at least need to have a positive test as a prerequisite to internment; we only need to be “suspected.” And here’s the $64-million-dollar question: detained for how long?

We’re not done yet. Here’s the government’s next installment:

Enforcement

If a quarantineable disease is suspected or identified, CDC may issue a federal isolation or quarantine order. (Emphasis mine). Public health authorities at the federal, state, local, and tribal levels may sometimes seek help from police or other law enforcement officers to enforce a public health order.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Coast Guard officers are authorized to help enforce federal quarantine orders.

Breaking a federal quarantine order is punishable by fines and imprisonment.

Federal law allows the conditional release of persons from quarantine if they comply with medical monitoring and surveillance. (Emphasis mine)

And the penalty for non-submission?

  • 271. Penalties for violation of quarantine laws (a) Penalties for persons violating quarantine laws. Any person who violates any regulation prescribed under sections 264 to 266 of this title, or any provision of section 269 of this title or any regulation prescribed thereunder, or who enters or departs from the limits of any quarantine station, ground, or anchorage in disregard of quarantine rules and regulations or without permission of the quarantine officer in charge, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $1,000 or by imprisonment for not more than one year, or both. (Emphasis mine)

Clearly, there’s something much bigger going on than “protection” from a virus from which 99.9% of people under 80 recover. Ask yourself why countries all over the world continue to insist that healthy people wear face masks—obscuring their humanity and interfering with normal life and normal healthy breathing—and are pushing a novel, highly experimental gene-modifying vaccine on their citizens.

Remember Ben Franklin’s prescient words, “Those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither.” Regardless of what we deserve, in the moment we surrender our liberty, we’ve also surrendered our safety.

E-Mail Cherie Zaslawsky: cherzz@sbcglobal.net

© Cherie Zaslawsky

 

The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
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Cherie Zaslawsky

Cherie Zaslawsky is a writer, freelance editor, and private educator/teacher/writing coach for high school students, as well as a confirmed Constitutionalist who nevertheless lives in California. You can find her work in her Substack: Cherie Z’s Truth Be Told, News with Views, Lew Rockwell, American Thinker, Canada Free Press, WND, The Post & Email, and more. Read more articles by Cherie at her Substack

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