By CRAIG CAMPBELL
Every public conflict reaches a climatic point where decisive action leads the way to closure.
In 2020 the coronavirus pandemic has created a conflict between freedom-loving Americans and socialists who have used government control to force compliance with government dictums, in the name of public safety and health.
The strain of excessive and illegal government over-reach these past nine months in restricting our liberties has reached its limits. We are starting to take back control from the autocratic fanatics currently running our local government.
We can no longer endure government mandates that force businesses out of business. We’ll remember the CampoBello Bistro, Perfect Cup, Red Chair Café, and others Anchorage businesses that are permanently closed due to our government’s response to COVID.
But times, they are a changing. We are starting to resist the draconian government mandates controlling every aspect of our lives.
SAVE ANCHORAGE is a grassroots movement to rally citizens to reject the closures of government meetings to the public and to support businesses trying to operate against Mayor Ethan Berkowitz unconstitutional closure mandates. It’s a great initiative to take back Anchorage.
ALASKANS FOR OPEN MEETINGS has been created to legally challenge the Anchorage Assembly’s violation of the Alaska Open Meetings Act. Finally, a legal challenge to the illegal actions of our local government this past summer.
LITTLE DIPPER DINER is taking their case against the Anchorage closure orders through the courts to invalidate Mayor Berkowtiz Emergency Order.
Enraged citizens are protesting outside the Assembly chambers, something I have never seen before. We are fired up. Tired of this tyrannical government denying us our rights.
I know, COVID-19 is a serious infectious disease, but it never should require us giving up our freedoms to protect society.
Imagine, if they are successful in restricting our freedom of movement and assembly based on a virus, could they also not restrict private ownership and use of guns by declaring a public safety emergency due to a rising crime rate caused by their own lack of supporting law enforcement. They are already trying to control our police, visa vie cabal member Meg Zaletel’s resolution 2020-339 which gives the Assembly power to review APD’s policies and procedures.
The coronavirus has tested our society. It has shown us what life is like under an authoritarian system which dictates societal practices that take away personal freedoms. A government forcing people to wear masks in the name of public health is just the first step towards forcing people to wear a certain type of clothing in the name of safety; or forcing people to buy only certain products under the guise of public health; or forcing people to buy government controlled health care.
See where we’re headed? When will this madness end? I say, right here, right now!
The resistance is working. Black Lives Matter was permitted to put up a sign on the publically owned Alaska Center for the Performing Arts (APAC) building. There were no riots, no public demonstrations, but there was public recognition that if a politically charged sign can be displayed supporting a radical Marxists organization on the APAC façade, then they have created a public forum and others can also display their political messages on the building.
Recognizing they created a hornet’s nest, the APAC denied Save Anchorage permission to put up their sign and stated they are changing APAC policy to prohibit all political signs. What idiots. Anybody with half a brain could have foreseen this outcome.
We’re winning. The Assembly has reopened, albeit on a limited and controlled basis. Restaurants and business are again open, with restrictions. Resistance has been peaceful in Anchorage, no riots. Patriotism is rising, more American flags being flown. You can feel the change in the air. But we have not achieved victory, yet.
Mayor Ethan Berkowitz has been politically damaged by his excessive “hunker down” and business restrictions. The Assembly cabal has been seen for what they are, an elitist, despotic autocracy. Recalls are in the making against cabal members who arrogantly flaunt their superior authority over us peons.
Don’t misunderstand my concern about COVID. I have been tested twice to make sure I am not asymptomatic and potentially infecting others. I wear a mask at retail outlets that have corporate policies mandating masks. A business requiring masks is far different from a government dictating universal mask usage.
Face it, we can no longer trust our local government. While the Anchorage infection rate has been rising and currently is at 5.1% of those tested, the World Health Organization sets a positive test rate of less than 10% as manageable. We’re half that. In fact, 94.9% of people tested came back negative for COVID.
Mayor Berkowitz said Friday that there’s an “increased reluctance” for people to share information about their social interactions with contact tracers. He assured us that all contact tracing data is confidential. Really? We have been told our personal information with the IRS and Social Security are confidential, only to later be told they had been hacked and our personal data released to unknown sources.
We are learning to live with COVID without having to destroy our economy and take away our freedom to assemble. The balance between managing a very contagious virus and wrecking our economy and taking away our freedoms is a no brainer. We must protect our freedoms and retain a viable economic city, while reasonably managing the transmission of an infectious disease.
We must never allow autocratic bureaucrats to create a society of subservient vassals, bowing to excessive and unnecessary government control, in order to “protect us from ourselves.”
In a free society, businesses can determine when to operate and how many customers they can accommodate. In a free society, citizens can determine whether they want to go into a place of business, eat at a restaurant, or go to the movies. In a free society government provides services, but is not the puppet-master of our everyday lifestyles.
Ronald Reagan once said “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
No more shut-downs. No more closing down government public meetings to the public. No more mandating business practices to the private sector.
This is the time, this is the place to stop the insanity of government over-reach and the unconstitutional deprivation of our liberties. Like a cancer, if we don’t stop it now, it will only metastasize and eventually kill democracy.
Craig E. Campbell served on the Anchorage Assembly between 1986 and 1995 and later as Alaska’s Tenth Lieutenant Governor. He was the previous Chief Executive Officer and President for Alaska Aerospace Corporation. He retired from the Alaska National Guard as Lieutenant General (AKNG) and holds the concurrent retired Federal rank of Major General (USAF).
Super good summary Craig. I’m sharing it with all my children so they can be thinking how their generation must also act for Liberty and Justice for all
Thank you Craig, I needed to read something with “common sense” and Patriotism today. Thank you also for your public service to Alaska as well as service to our country.
Good message Craig from a man who has learned to be both a good follower and a good leader over his storied career!! Interested in the mayorship?
I can’t understand how federal courts down in the lower 48 can rule these “health” mandates are unconstitutional and then we still are forced to live in a “state of emergency” where local leaders can dictate which businesses will survive and who will leave packing on the next ferry?
Are we curently seeing the “united” part of our country dissolve as each state chooses to carve out it’s post COVID future based on pastisan ideas and hypocritical leaders?
This facade of democracy will not survive another year of this behavior from our elected leaders and medical czars who have chosen a power grab over direct representation of the people.
We’re putting up some resistance to the Globalist Plandemic. Winning ? Not sure about that. We’ve had two “lockdowns” so far. Right now we are in an intermediate, partially open phase. The Plan for massive testing and contact tracing is still in place. Masking and social distancing are still the norm in Anchortown. Berkowitz is not the originator of the actions taking place. How are the Court cases going ? Have our Constitutional Rights been restored ? Who’s medical advise are we following ? The CDC is an arm of the Globalists who want to shut down America. We are still in a fight for the very existence of our Country as an independent nation. I hear your encouraging rhetoric loud and clear, but the Schools are not open. Churches are not operating without restrictions. Businesses are hardly operating like they should be. When the masks are gone, then I’ll know we have achieved something tangible. Until then, yes, it’s good to see some resistance, but until the COVID bullshit meets it’s deserved end, we will be struggling against the Mainstream Media and our new Globalist overlords… They aren’t just going to disappear… There’s more to come.
Just say no. Resist. Don’t wear a useless mask, which is nothing more than a Democrat bumper sticker for your face. Parents who care about liberty should remove permanently their kids from government-controlled schools which teach disdain for America and its founding principles of liberty and inalienable rights granted by our Creator. Our church is open at full capacity because the mayor and assembly do not have the authority to dictate church policy. We are not required to observe or obey unlawful laws. My heart aches for the business owners unfairly targeted by these pernicious policies due to fear of reprisals. They should sue the mayor and the assembly using the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee “that private property shall not be taken for a public use without just compensation designed to bar Government from forcing some people alone to bear public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.”
I have been waiting for someone to not only say enough is enough but do something. As an elder, I do not have the ability to start the process but am more than willing to do whatever I can. Thank you Mr. Campbell, Save Anchorage, Alaskans for Open Meetings and The Little Dipper restaurant for stepping up to the cause. And thank you, Suzanne, for the important forum you provide!!
“I know COVID-19 is a serious infectious disease, but it never should require us giving up our freedoms to protect society.”
The absurdity of this statement calls into question everything else the writer says. The whole point of the measures being taken is to protect society. I suppose we could let Covid run willy-nilly through the populace, but that would cost lives, likely many lives. Stop and think. Is your mother, or your sister, or your child. or you spouse worth sacrificing so we can go to a bar, or a political gathering where everyone crowds together, or maybe a sports venue, or, heaven forbid, a church?
Things will return to a new normal. We will get through this. It will leave many of us untouched but many of us will get ill, some will die, and some will live with complications the rest of their lives.
Equating freedom with defying measures being taken to prevent this disease storming through the land is just simply, well, you pick the appropriate descriptive term.
Just don’t tell me it’s freedom. Unless you believe that freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose.
Many of us will get ill or die during any flu season. Taking these unprecedented, draconian measures of placing everyone under house arrest for an indefinate period of time, forcibly closing businesses, preventing people from earning a basic living, banning church services, and prohibiting the people from personally confronting leaders who pass laws behind closed doors is NOT a “new normal” I’m willing to accept. The whole point of the measures being taken is not to protect society, but to control society. Who’s going to protect us from the measures, which have proved to be immeasurably more harmful to society than the virus. You propose we let the government measures run willy-nilly, indefinately, because to you our basic liberties inumerated in the Constitution are worth sacrificing so you can feel “safe” from a virus the government has no power to control or stop.
“Live free or die.”
“Give me liberty, or give me death.”
“If I have to give up my freedom to save my life (never mind yours), it isn’t worth it.”
Three ways of saying the same thing.
People like Greg R. are the problem that block any successful attempt to turn the ship. Since this idiocy falls within his tolerance level for removal of constitutionally protected individual freedoms, he is willing to promote such tyranny. The difference of my view from that held by Greg R. is that the very reason the US Constitution was drafted was because the authors had LIVED the very creeping weight of an oppressive government and knew this is the very method by which it had occurred. Stopping it where it begins is the only way to prevent it. Seat belt laws were part of the very beginning. Any law that mandates a behavior that is strictly in the purview of the individual should be abolished by the courts. There should a constitutional review of all laws at this point. Recommending a behavior is in the government purview, mandating that behavior is tyranny.
When this magnificent man is taken by God, his obituary will note that Craig was always a law and order man until they made it a law to wear a mask. He will be remembered as the Martin Luther King of face covering.
Comments are closed.