Recently proclaimed as Arkansas’s “Bill of Rights” city, Jonesboro continues to emerge from “forever COVID” in remarkably good condition, and we welcome this hiatus of “normal-er” while awaiting the next round of whatever variant of attack is being conjured.
While some continue to “mask-up” and some government and private entities continue to limit activities, such as in-house dining, it is by choice, not mandate. With sympathy and condolences to all who suffered illness or lost someone, it’s time to assess.
We are exiting a year-plus of constricting civil liberties in contravention to the First and Fourth Amendments, such as the April 2020 local curfew imposed for no good reason other than fear. Watch the city council meeting in which mass-graves, like those reported as being dug outside New York City, was invoked as part of the rationale — New York City! Around that time, President Donald Trump assured us a short, “two- week lockdown,” which wasn’t. This was followed by still-waffling mask, no masque, stop-the-spread, clown-circus scientism show from, now, wholly discredited public health bureaucracies (Arkansas and DC).
The leadership of Jonesboro, Craighead County, Northeast Arkansas, state legislators, the state Legislature and the future governor would do well to look themselves in the mirror, to gut-check their wherewithal to resist fear. When the next invisible crisis strikes, whether a wholly unnatural act or by an act of God, protect our natural rights as Americans. Tellingly, residents did not chafe much from the curfew after the March 28 tornado, which was consistently eased and gone in a week.
Most importantly, what should now be a chastened city council and area medical establishment must hold organizational prayer meetings on how to confront that which will not be chastened — a public health bureaucracy that failed miserably. Had the medical doctors and dentists built a wall of credibility early on, based on their expertise on local conditions, it might have resulted in Jonesboro and, maybe the county, then the state modeling more of South Dakota, which prioritized personal liberties over, here, Asa’s executive edicts.
How do we know? As of May 15, 2021, Craighead County was among the lowest counties in the state at 30% “vaccinated” and the lowest among the top-five of 75 counties. The people in NEA, know when their God-given rights are infringed upon and their willingness to risk supersedes their willingness to succumb to fear-based pressures to comply. Another hint? Our federal government no longer defends the national borders against COVID variants flooding the gates. American citizens were force-fed restrictions on our civil liberties while illegal aliens run free today. It’s on the local medical establishment’s shoulders to call out public health scares and guide scared elected officials, using science as they know it, not media-induced, bureaucratic fear from NYC, Little Rock or Washington, D.C.
Howard L. Weinstock
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