“Checkpoint Charlie”: the portal between East and West Berlin during the brutal Soviet occupation of East Germany. It was a place where communist soldiers would demand to see “YOUR PAPERS” if they were to allow you to be one of the few people granted permission to move past the infamous Berlin wall. It represented the spot where “special” people could pass, while others were restricted by the state from seeing friends, family, and former co-workers on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
“Escape from New York”: the 1981 thriller created and directed by John Carpenter, starring Kurt Russell, Ernest Borgnine, and Lee Van Cleef. It was a dystopian adventure set in a “future” US which had created an unconstitutional “national police force” (read DHS, BATF), saw New York turned into a giant island prison, and saw the government give Russell’s character, Snake Plisskin, a chance to be free after trying to rob the Denver Federal Reserve Bank. All he had to do was help a stranded President “escape” from the prison of Manhattan.
Today, thanks to the dystopian musings and mandates of leftist New York Mayor Bill de Blasio – and authoritarian police blindly “following orders” -- history and fiction have met dark reality.
As WINS Radio 1010 reports, de Blasio has turned New York City into a prison that can be accessed only by passing through police-patrolled checkpoints.
‘Starting today, we’re going to do something new in New York City: We will have checkpoints at key entry points to the city,’ the mayor said.
New. If de Blasio wanted to do something “new”, he might respect his own oath to protect and defend the US Constitution and the NY State Constitution, both of which prohibit him from doing this.
According to the tin-pot dictator of the Big Apple, if you come from one of the 35 states (including Puerto Rico) that he’s deemed “beyond the Iron Curtain”, and you don’t have proper “papers” showing that you’ve passed the magical (and unreliable) COVID19 “test” within the pat 72 hours?
No entry unless you “quarantine for fourteen days” and retain proof of that to show to the prison guards of NYC.
In this, de Blasio is following the lead of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, and Maine Governor Janet Mills in completely dismissing the original meaning of the Interstate Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, which was written to stop blockades of people and products traveling from state to state. He overlooks the First Amendment protection of free association, the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unwarranted searches and seizures, the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment promises of due process of law, the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and the Contract Clause in Article One, which prohibits state-based politicians from infringing on the fulfillment of private contracts.
Surely, many of the people trying to enter the city are doing so for business purposes.
But at many entry points to the city, de Blasio will have New York City Sheriffs randomly checking people by stopping cars and demanding “papers”.
‘Travelers from those states will be given information about the quarantine,’ de Blasio said. ‘They’ll be reminded that it’s required, not optional. They’ll be reminded that failure to quarantine is a violation of state law and it comes with serious penalties. In fact, under certain circumstances, the fines can be as high as $10,000. So this is serious stuff.’
This for a virus the numbers for which cannot be claimed to be reliable in any way. This for a virus that, even if the fatality numbers weren’t exaggerated, has a fatality rate similar to the seasonal flu.
Will de Blasio demand this every flu season, and tell visitors they must carry papers showing they aren’t “infected” with the flu?
What about the agents of the state who can demand people stop and “get close” to them? Will they be checked? How can de Blasio state that those Sheriffs are “clean” after even one check with a visitor? Is he not creating his own, tax-funded, government-run, transmission vector?
And what of “anthropogenic climate change”? Traffic into NYC is bad enough, but now, the Mayor himself is going to slow traffic, clog tunnels and bridges, and possibly transmit the virus – even as citizens who resist the invasions of their privacy are put in greater danger.
Even as crime in NYC skyrockets.
The New York State Republican Leader, Robert Ortt, expressed similar sentiment, telling the public that the mayor should focus his attention on getting small businesses reopening, and:
It’s deeply concerning that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is using law enforcement resources to set up coronavirus checkpoints at city entry points to enforce Governor Cuomo’s quarantine rules for travelers, with fines as high as $10,000.
Who would have thought that in the US, in the supposed “heart of American commerce”, a mayor could employ such errant nonsense and bring a once thriving city to its proverbial knees, could show such callous disregard for the US Constitution and fundamental morality, and…
Yes, make the place seem more like a location from the Cold War, or from John Carpenter and Kurt Russell’s masterpiece, than a place supposedly under the jurisdiction of the US Constitution.
That’s New York today. Dystopia, thanks to de Blasio, a man who has already shown towering hypocrisy in his differing standards on "social distancing" and mask mandates", and who is now acting more like a member of Stalin's Supreme Soviet than someone an American who supposedly abides by the US and NY Constitutions. Perhaps if people entering NY simply say they're "protesting" for BLM, his rules will simply vanish, just like his principles seem to have disappeared into thin air.