I know lawyers do not study the Constitution in law school, but when I heard what supposed “Constitutional Scholar” Alan Dershowitz said on Crowdsource The Truth regarding state powers, all I could think is that it gave all true scholars a bad name.
After hearing and reading the quotes from Mr. Dershowitz, I was able to track down the interview on the Crowdsource The Truth Facebook page. I wanted to watch it firsthand to make sure Mr. Dershowitz wasn’t being misquoted or quoted out of context. I’m glad I did for a couple of reasons. Yes, I wanted to give Mr. Dershowitz a fair hearing and yes, a lot of what he said was ethically and constitutionally sound. My problems begin around 20 minutes into the video.
Constitutional Illiteracy
Let’s take a look at some of the quotes that have raised the most ire with constitutionally literate Americans.
You have no constitutional right to endanger the public and spread the disease, even if you disagree…
Alan Dershowitz
This statement is true, but it avoids a very basic fact. The Fourth Amendment REQUIRES the government to show in court probable cause that you are a danger to the public. And the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments PROHIBIT the government from depriving you of life, liberty, or property without due process. One of the most basic concepts of our legal system is that of due process, a fair legal process where the rights of all involved are protected. Part of that is the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty. Yet what Mr. Dershowitz is proposing, and which he will further flesh out in the interview, is an assumption that everyone is a carrier, a Typhoid Mary, spreading the disease to everyone they encounter.
There is also another basic assumption made by this and similar arguments, that the only person responsible for their actions are the ones who wish to go outside. Mr. Dershowitz, and thousands of others I’ve seen on social media, forget that for someone to spread the virus, they must encounter someone who does not already have it. If a person does not want to take the chance of getting the virus, it is incumbent on them to stay out of the public, not to get the government to force others to stay at home.
You have no right not to be vaccinated. You have no right not to wear a mask. You have no right to open up your business.
Alan Dershowitz
These statements are not only wrong, they are absurd!
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
U.S. Constitution, Amendment IV
Our right to be secure in our person against unreasonable searches and seizures SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED. Guess what, Mr. Dershowitz? You have not been granted the authority to determine what reasonable is. The people created the governments, we established their boundaries, and we determine what is and is not reasonable. PERIOD! That goes for vaccinations, the wearing of masks, and the opening of our properties, businesses, or otherwise.
No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
U.S. Constitution, Amendment V
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;
U.S. Constitution, Amendment XIV
Furthermore, Mr. Dershowitz, both the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments PROHIBIT governments from depriving someone of their life, liberty, or property without that famous due process. That includes the liberty to go outside, travel, and do what they want, up to and until there is REASONABLE CAUSE that they are a danger to others. That also means the government is PROHIBITED from depriving you of your property, including the property of your business, without showing in court a REASONABLE CAUSE that you individually are a danger to others.
…if you refuse to be vaccinated, the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor’s office and plunge a needle into your arm.
Alan Dershowitz
I have a hard time putting into words just how disturbing this statement is, especially from someone of Jewish heritage. Nowhere is the government given the authority to make medical decisions for you. Nowhere is the government given the power to assault you for not taking their advice. In fact, should any government agent follow Mr. Dershowitz’s recommendation, they would be in violation of federal law, punishable by a fine and up to TEN YEARS IN PRISON!
Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both;
18 USC §242
To have anything “plunged into your arm” is bodily injury. And if complications should arise from this forced vaccination, the government employees who did this could spend LIFE IN PRISION!
… and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
18 USC §242
If this happened to me, I would push for life in prison under the kidnapping clause of this statue. Ask yourself, is the assault, kidnapping, and forced medical treatments by any government really that different than what Josef Mengele did to the Jews in Auschwitz?
… you have no right to refuse to be vaccinated against a contagious disease. Public health, the police of the Constitution gives the state the power to compel that. And there are cases in the United States Supreme Court.
Alan Dershowitz
First of all, Mr. Dershowitz has the entire power structure our Founding Fathers created backwards. We do not derive our rights and powers from the government, they derive their powers from us. There is no “police power” in the Constitution. There is no “public health” clause in the Constitution. Mr. Dershowitz is probably parroting the nonsense that is taught in law schools and courts across the nation that anything not prohibited to the government by the Constitution is a power they can exercise. That is a fallacy we will delve into shortly.
That’s what a democracy is about. And if the majority of the people agree and support that for public health measures you have to be vaccinated, you have to be vaccinated.
Alan Dershowitz
Mr. Dershowitz is quite correct. In a democracy your rights are subject to the will of the majority. There’s just one problem: WE DON”T LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY! And this is the very reason why.
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
Thomas Jefferson
Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.
James Madison
The very reason we have a Constitution is to secure the blessings of liberty. We are a republic specifically so that our rights will supersede the will of the majority; so that a vote cannot deprive you of your life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness, or any other right. Yet Mr. Dershowitz seems more than happy to throw the entire idea of rights and liberty out the window because of a virus.
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”
Benjamin Franklin
It seems Mr. Dershowitz is more than happy to live in a democracy, as long as he is a wolf. I wonder how he would feel if he was the lamb?
They should give you an alternative. The alternative is to live in your home. Don’t get vaccinated, but never ever leave your home or live in a bubble. But if you want to interact with other people, you cannot become Typhoid Mary.
Alan Dershowitz
Mr. Dershowitz wants you locked up if you disagree with the government. But wait, there’s more on that to come.
Constitution 101
The Constitution doesn’t give you the right to spread your illness to other people.
Alan Dershowitz
Lesson number one for Mr. Dershowitz: The Constitution does not give anyone unalienable rights. Your right to be secure in your person is protected by the Constitution, but it does not come from it.
Lesson number two: You are innocent until PROVEN guilty in America. IF there is probable cause someone may spread the virus, then the government can detain them, and only them. There is no power delegated by the Constitution to the government to arbitrarily intern you, perform medical experiments on you, or make you submit to the will of some government employee that is outside the specific enumerated powers given.
What you can’t do is say “I don’t agree with Faucci, therefore I’m going to take the law into my own hands and spread the disease.”
Alan Dershowitz
Lesson number three: Mr. Faucci has not been elected by the people to establish law. He is an advisor to the President, but that does not give him the authority to dictate to the American people how to live their lives.
It’s not the people who disagree with Mr. Faucci who are taking the law in their own hands, it’s people like Mr. Dershowitz who are blatantly and flagrantly usurping the power of the people over their government. It is Mr. Dershowitz and others like him who are spreading the disease of tyranny and despotism across this nation.
If the decision is made by the government…
Alan Dershowitz
Lesson number four: In a Constitutional Republic the government does not get to decide what it can and cannot do. It can ONLY do what has been delegated by the people through the Constitution that formed it. What Mr. Dershowitz is describing is not a democracy but a despotic oligarchy. That is a system where, if you can rise to the aristocracy of office, you can do whatever you please as long as you can get enough of your colleagues to agree with you.
Doctor says to you, “Unless you cut off your leg you’ll die.” You have a right to die. You don’t have to cut off your leg. But if the doctor says, “Unless you cut off your leg, your leg is contagious and will spread your disease to many, many, many other people, that’s a completely different issue. Constitutionally.
Alan Dershowitz
This is a completely salacious argument. Mr. Dershowitz is comparing apples to oranges. IF a doctor has evidence that you are contagious, then yes, the government has probable cause to restrict your movements. That, however, does not give them the authority to mandate medical treatment. What Mr. Dershowitz wants to do is bypass the doctor’s diagnosis, prognosis, and even the examination. And then, to use his example, cut off everyone’s leg because of a disease that some people have and even fewer die from. And the fact that he claims the Constitution gives government the authority to do this proves he has been educated into imbecility when it comes to constitutional issues.
If a safe vaccine is developed for COVID-19, I hope it’s mandated. And I will defend it and I will argue that in the Supreme Court of the United States against your views.
Alan Dershowitz
Safe for whom, Mr. Dershowitz? There is no such thing as a totally safe vaccine. The American people are not all the same. There are people who get sick and die from vaccines every year and there are others who are seriously injured by complications from vaccines. Remember, vaccines are created by weakened versions of diseases so your body can develop antibodies to fight them without being overwhelmed. Yet what did Mr. Dershowitz say earlier in this interview?
You have no constitutional right to endanger the public and spread the disease, even if you disagree…
Alan Dershowitz
Yet what does he claim the authority to do? To endanger an unknown percentage of the public by spreading a disease because he disagrees with not being vaccinated. He is literally claiming a right he claims you do not have, simply because he disagrees with you.
When he was asked if he would get a vaccine if it was available tomorrow, Mr. Dershowitz said:
I would be the first one on line, my children would get it, everybody would get it, IF we felt it was safe. We’d make our own, obviously, make our own judgment. If decided to, <garbled> civil disobedience and violate the law, that would be a different thing. But the law would be completely valid.
Alan Dershowitz
So let me get this straight, Mr. Dershowitz. If YOU don’t think the vaccine is safe and you decides on a course of “civil disobedience”, that’s one thing. But if anyone else doesn’t think the vaccine is safe they are to be rounded up, dragged into a doctor’s office, and forcibly injected. This is what you just said, isn’t it?
Conclusion
How many people who don’t know any better are listening to this nonsense from Mr. Dershowitz and others like him? How many people who have not taken the time to think through what he is saying are following along like the good little serfs Mr. Dershowitz thinks we are?
You may think that something on the order of Dr. Mengele wouldn’t happen in America today, but I remind you that thousands of American citizens were interned in the past simply because of their Japanese heritage. One case, Koramatzu v United States, went to the Supreme Court. And that court, which Mr. Dershowitz puts so much faith in, found that it was perfectly legal to arrest a man for violating an illegal Executive Order to deprive him of his life, liberty, and property without due process of law. Do you really want to entrust the protection of your rights to a government like that?
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t want to stop Mr. Dershowitz from speaking his mind. I just want every American to see just how irrational, illogical, ignorant, and intolerant these ideas are. I want everyone to feel sorry that after such a long and storied career, Mr. Dershowitz is showing his ignorance of a topic in which he is supposed to be an expert. I want Americans everywhere to realize that just because someone is a lawyer, or claims to be a constitutional scholar, it doesn’t mean they have any clue what the supreme law of the land actually says. Mr. Dershowitz has been indoctrinated by a legal and educational system that has long abandoned even the pretense of studying the Constitution or viewing it as the supreme law of the land.
Mr. Dershowitz and others who think like him should be pitied, then ignored. And when Mr. Dershowitz claims the government has the authority to intern you, assault you, and inject you, remind him of the words he said that those laws don’t apply to him and his family. And when someone from the government comes to force you to comply, hand them a copy of the Constitution, or at least some of the more pertinent parts of it, and remind them they swore an oath to support it. Remember, the reason we have a Second Amendment is to keep us and our states free from tyrants that think they can ignore the supreme law of the land and do whatever they think is right. It has happened before in America. I pray it doesn’t have to happen again.
