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Greetings. This is Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church with a

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moment of truth where we challenge you to think through an important issue of life and faith. And

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today I want to address an open letter to the progressive hysterical woman who hectored me

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in a local park this week as I jogged without a mask. And she said, you, where is your mask?

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Don't you know you're risking the health and well-being of the rest of us by not wearing one?

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We all need to do our part. It may be a sacrifice, but all of us need to make personal sacrifices for

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the greater good. And she went on like this until I just moved on. Now this was an exercise in social

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shaming. And this is going to happen more and more in our COVID culture. Social shaming designed to

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alter my behavior in accordance with the dictates of the herd instinct. More on this momentarily.

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What is the herd instinct? Well, I politely told her to mind her own business, perhaps consider for

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tomorrow a mask that covered her whole face. But as I jogged, I thought, well, this encounter might

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serve as a kind of metaphor for the whole coronavirus crisis. If I were to answer her more thoughtfully

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instead of with an insult or an apology, I guess, what would I say? Well, first of all, I thought of the people of Israel

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when they were poised to go into the land after God had delivered them from Egypt and they sent out 12 spies

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to spy out the land of Canaan and then come back with a report. And you may remember from this incident

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in the book of Numbers in the Old Testament that indeed of those 12 spies, two of them brought back a good

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report. The land is flowing with milk and honey, right? It took two men to carry one cluster of grapes.

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They were so large and fruitful. That was Joshua and Caleb who brought back a good report.

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And they were the ones who ended up of all the tribe of Israel, tribes of Israel. It was Joshua and Caleb

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who were the only ones that eventually did go into the land. Well, 10 of the others, spies, then they

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brought back a bad report and just terrified the people of Israel, just as bad as America is terrified

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today of this coronavirus. Now, I'm not exegeting the text in exact accordance with the rules of

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exegesis, but I'm merely making an analogy here between the terror and the fear and the hysteria of

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Israel and the terror and the fear and the hysteria of the American people now over this virus, right?

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Well, Numbers tells us that that night all the people of the community raised their voices and

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wept aloud. All the Israelites grumbled against Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly said to them,

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if only we had died in Egypt or in this desert, why is the Lord bringing us to the land only to let us

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fall by the sword? Our wives and children will be taken as plunder. Wouldn't it be better for us to go back

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to Egypt? And they said to each other, we should choose a leader and go back to Egypt. There is true fear

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and hysteria and terror. Oh, the whole assembly, when Moses tried to talk them out of it, the whole

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assembly talked about stoning them. Oh, and God threatened, I will strike them down with a plague and

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destroy them. Funny that he would use a plague to do that. I wonder if it was the coronavirus he had in mind.

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And he says to Moses and Aaron, I will make you into a nation greater and stronger than they.

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Oh, then the men Moses had sent to explore the land who returned and made the whole community

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grumble against him by spreading a bad report about it. These men, the Bible tells us, responsible for

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spreading the bad report about the land were struck down and died of a plague before the Lord.

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Oh, dear listener, this is the same kind of terror and fear and herd instinct, I submit to you, that we face

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here in this country today. And the Lord is not pleased with us, I submit to you. Well, when I thought of this

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situation, I thought immediately of Ben Franklin's remark about trading liberty for safety, for that's what

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America wants to do now. Oh, we're so panicked and hysterical about this thing that we're willing to trade

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our liberty for a promise of safety. No guarantees, of course. Oh, Ben Franklin said, those who would give

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up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. How insightful

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that saying is, because it's precisely what's transpiring now in America. Oh, as we speak, the current shutdown

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ordered by Governor Little, and more broadly, by the federal government in Washington, D.C. In it, we are

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promised safety from the coronavirus pandemic if we just surrender our constitutional liberties.

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That is virtually shut down now for the time being, isn't it? Or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. We are not able to

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exercise our Christian faith as congregations, right? Or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the

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people peaceably to assemble. That peaceable assembly is now forbidden, isn't it? Our governments, both federal

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and state, have flattened our liberties in this amendment as thoroughly as an 18-wheeler flattens

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roadkill on a highway. I can't practice my Christian faith on Sunday, but Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan

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and Minneapolis, Minnesota can practice theirs on Friday. My freedom of speech to preach in my church is

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gone. My church's freedom to peaceably assemble is gone. Oh, but pastor, a condescendingly clueless

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Christian told me, it's only for a little while until this emergency passes. Oh, is that so? Is that so?

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In the first place, there's no foreseeable end as lockdown extensions follow one after another. Even if

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they do end temporarily, they will be reimposed in the near future. You can guarantee that as

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night follows day. As surely as love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, these shutdowns

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will continue and follow one after another. And then regardless of how short or long the shutdown is,

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where does any government get the authority to take my liberty for any cause?

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Oh, it doesn't, dear listener. And it's time we stood up and said this clearly. My liberties are

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unalienable and they are given by my creator, not by government. And they can't be taken away by

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government either. Neither you nor your government have the authority to take, suspend, or diminish them

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in any way. It doesn't matter whether a pestilence takes 0.9 or 99% of a population. No government has

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the right to deprive me of my liberties, even for a day. Rather, in an emergency situation like ours,

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and we are admittedly in an emergency situation, the government does have an advisory and a support

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role in an event like this. The resources, marshal and supplied, can still be provided. All of the

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resources and all of the advice provided by both federal and state governments can still be offered

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and provided without the draconian measures before us. Advice from places like the Centers for Disease

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Control and the National Institute of Health can still be given and strongly exhorted. But the force of

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government is beyond our constitutional boundaries. The progressive tyrant Rahm Emanuel, the late

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mayor of Chicago and an advisor to Barack Obama, is famous for saying, never let a good crisis go to

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waste. He certainly has one here, in which he and other progressives can implement drastic draconian

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control measures which the American people would otherwise instinctively reject. But here,

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under the promise of safety in a life-threatening pandemic, government bureaucrats can erect sweeping

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dictatorial measures to control the population, and these dictatorial measures then, in the end,

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never go away after the threat has gone away. But Rahm Emanuel is less famous for another saying of

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socialism, and that goes like this. First, we will try the power of persuasion. If that doesn't work,

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then we will try the persuasion of power. Oh, ominous, isn't it? Behold, America, this little

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witticism unfolding before you. The first part does indeed encapsulate the proper role of government

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in this situation, and that is, the power of persuasion. Make the case, government. Use reason, facts, and

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science. The American people will decide for themselves, right or wrong, but you must persuade them,

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not compel them. What tyranny does is the second part of that saying, and that is, we will try the

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persuasion of power. They will use brute force to make you comply. If you are out on the wave surfing

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in California by yourself, as one guy was doing, there's film of this, far from anyone else, the county

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sheriff will still send out boats into the ocean to arrest you. If you're playing catch in your front yard

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with your children, the police in Ohio will still handcuff you in front of your children and take

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you away. If you violate a governor's ban on church services in Kentucky, and this is being done by

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congregating on Sunday morning, the sheriff will take down your license number in the parking lot and

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order you to quarantine for two weeks. Ah, dear listener, how quickly our liberties go away,

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and tyranny appears in its place. The essence is that my constitutional liberties do not become

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non-essential because of a temporary necessity. Necessity, necessity. Oh, we need to do this. It's so

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urgent. Well, as William Pitt, the great statesman of England, said, necessity is the plea for every

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infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants. It is the creed of slaves. How right he

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is. Necessity. And we are under necessity in our day, aren't we? But it is always the plea for every

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infringement of human freedom, and it's being done to us now. It is the argument of tyrants, Pitt says.

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It is the creed of slaves. Do you want to be a slave or do you want to be a freeman? American,

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if you give in to the plea of necessity and give up your liberties, as many of us have, rolling over,

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showing our belly, well then, you richly deserve your slavery. And, oh, I'm afraid this includes you,

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dear lady that I met in the park, our coronavirus queen. And then secondly, I would say to her,

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just because you're acting impulsively from your deeply ingrained herd instinct, that doesn't mean

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that your actions are in accord with reality. No, just because you're acting on herd impulse

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doesn't mean that you're acting in accordance with reality. We've heard a lot lately about herd

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immunity, haven't we? It's become a buzzword. The CDC defines it as a situation in which a sufficient

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proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease to make it spread from person to person

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unlikely. That means that when lots of people are immune, fewer people get sick and fewer germs and

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viruses are able to spread from person to person. Well, while that condition, it's a ways off yet from

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obtaining in America, another condition has overwhelmed the culture, and that is herd instinct.

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Not herd immunity, but herd instinct. The definition of herd instinct is the obedience of the individual

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to the mass, blindly and without reflection. That's what's going on here with the compliance to all

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these Orwellian measures. The obedience of the individual to the mass, blindly and without

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reflection. Reflection. Herd instinct. Now, under the right circumstances, the herd instinct is a survival

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instinct. When one wildebeest on the African savanna spots a lion, for instance, lions on the

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hunting, that wildebeest uses its God-given adaptation, which is speed, to flee, well then, the

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herd follows and it survives. It doesn't have to see the lion to verify its presence before fleeing. It

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follows the mass, blindly and without reflection. And then, only the weak and the old fall behind and

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are thus culled from the herd by the lion. This phenomenon has occurred in human history, too.

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From the 3rd to the early 5th century, whole populations in Europe fled from the barbarian

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hordes that invaded in great sweeping waves, raping, pillaging, burning, and killing as they went.

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No one had to see or meet a barbarian in order to get out of dodge with all due haste, right? The herd

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instinct caused many to survive who would have otherwise perished. And during this period, the

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demographics of Europe changed significantly, too, as a whole new populations resettled in areas

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previously unknown to them. The herd instinct can change history. For better or worse, that condition

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is fully established in America today, the herd instinct. And it is changing our history, too.

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Just as fear drives the wildebeest on and on through the savannah, just as fear drove the 3rd

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century European on and on, blindly, without reflection, into unknown territory, so today,

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fear is driving the herd of Americans on and on, blindly, without reflection, into unknown territory.

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And that is tyranny. Because while the herd instinct can save lives, it can also destroy lives.

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Lion prides work together to use the wildebeest herd instinct to drive them to waiting members of the

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pride. And the Plains Indians used to drive buffalo herds over cliffs, using their herd instinct to

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harvest a winter's bounty of protein. And famously, of course, the lemmings herd instinct drives them

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blindly, without reflection, over the cliffs of Dover into the sea. But, like lemmings, the herd instinct

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is destroying us. Here in America, it's not saving us. The threat is not commensurate to the measures

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being taken, dear listener. That's the important point. The threat we are under is not commensurate

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to the measures that are being taken to ameliorate it. The measures being taken are destroying the herd.

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It is one thing for a lion to threaten the wildebeest, a small cub, or a hyena. Hyenas feed on already

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dead carrion. They can't catch a wildebeest. Well, that's not a threat. To ignite the herd instinct

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over a non-threat like this is far more destructive than the supposed threat. Now, there's a qualifier

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that I have to make here. I'm not saying that the coronavirus is not a threat. It is.

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It is nasty if you contract it. And its symptoms are awful. And it can kill. It has killed. But the

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evidence is that the threat, though real, is not commensurate with the drastic draconian measures

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being taken by our politicians. Oh, they all love control, don't they? They're all exulting in this.

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Well, thus far, for example, Idaho has 1,609 confirmed cases with 41 deaths. And this is out of

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a population of 1,826,156. That proportion does not call for the measures being taken by our Idaho state

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government. And in the United States of America as a whole, there have been over 632,000 cases,

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confirmed cases, with over 31,000 deaths out of a population of over 350 million. That, too,

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once again, is the drastic draconian measures. Leveling a country in order to level an ephemeral

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graph is way out of proportion, not commensurate at all with the measures being taken. In the history

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of epidemiology, there has never been such a disproportionate response to a pandemic as this

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one. Now, in those nations which have dealt with this successfully, like South Korea, strategic

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extensive testing for the virus, identifies many, if not most, of the victims who are then quarantined.

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The victims are quarantined. The rest of the population, most of whom are otherwise healthy,

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are free to go about their normal lives. You don't have to crash the economy to get at a few cases

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of coronavirus. But what do we do? Instead, we quarantine the healthy so that they're not able

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to go about their normal lives. What are the results? What are the results, dear listener?

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Ah, suicides increase. Number one, for a variety of reasons, suicides increase. The National

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Suicide Prevention Hotline has seen incoming calls triple since the recession started due to the shutdown,

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right? And although there are no reliable stats yet on how many more suicides there are to date,

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the World Journal of Psychiatry reports, and I quote them, they say, economic recession periods appear

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to increase overall suicide rates, unquote. Well, then there's also unemployment. Unemployment numbers

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are approaching historic levels. While the Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts unemployment rates over

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15%, that's up from a low of under 3% before the virus recession, many others, many other economists

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think it is much, much higher, really, in reality, as much as 35%, since the Bureau's numbers lag behind

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the actual situation on the ground. But that's not hard to predict, is it? You just look out your door,

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look at the streets downtown. We can see all around us, no one is working. And then there are small

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businesses, too. Most of them, family-owned or partnerships, they have had to close, too. So many of

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them with tight margins of profits and overhead, these will not recover. Your favorite restaurant

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or hair salon or Pilates studio may or may not be able to reopen when this stupid stay-at-home order

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is lifted. Oh, evidence is coming in as well, dear listener. That once strong food chain in America,

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which supplies our rich and abundant and varied diet of food from farm to processor to distributor to

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grocer to your table, that food chain is beginning to break down. Pigs and chickens are being slaughtered

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and rendered into fat instead of bacon. Oh, that's got to be one of the greatest tragedies of all this.

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No bacon being produced. That hurts me. Farmers are also pouring milk out on the ground because

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restaurants no longer purchase it. On and on we could go in this food chain. And all of these may

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well combine to plunge us into a full-scale depression, many predict. Is this leveling of our

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country worth leveling some ephemeral coronavirus curve? Researchers have confirmed that death and

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disease did increase during the Great Depression by the millions due to malnutrition, not starvation.

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There's a myth going around that people starve during the Great Depression. There's not a lot of evidence

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for that. And there's a popular figure going around of 7 million. And that's quite exaggerated,

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according to other researchers. It's from the Russian state mouthpiece Pravda,

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but it's not a reliable figure. But nevertheless, millions did die of death and disease due to

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malnutrition. You don't eat enough food. You don't eat the right kinds of food, a kind of full diet that

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provides you with all the vitamins and minerals and nutrition that your body needs. Then you are going

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to find yourself malnourished and prone to a whole array of different conditions and diseases. And this

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indeed did happen and might well happen to us if indeed the food supply in the food chain is short

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circuited. Well, all of this is to show that the herd instinct, that herd instinct that I saw so clearly,

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it was just an evangelical and a fervent heart that she had to preserve the species. And you weren't

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helping to preserve the species by not wearing a mask. Well, that herd instinct to ramp up our

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collective adrenaline levels and that herd instinct to foster panic and fear in order to stampede us,

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they're not only destructive, but seem to be very effective. They were very effective on that person

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in the park by whom I jogged on that day. There's something primal, isn't there, about working together

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through this crisis, sacrificing for the greater good. Don't question authority. They know better than us,

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the old expert syndrome that we see so often, isn't it? We can all hold hands and sing kumbaya around a

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campfire, especially since the soon will be no more power grid if this keeps up. And we can virtue

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signal all day to our friends that we are part of the team as we don our masks and bring our tape

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measures to ensure we're six feet from you. So 21 feet is now the new separation point and it's

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kind of confusing to me. And we will snitch on our neighbors when they're outside playing with

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their children. These are all incidences that have actually happened in the news.

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Snitch on those that are playing outside with their children or lifting weights in their front yard.

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And we can hunt you down in a forest preserved picnic ground and we will try and publicly shame you for

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not wearing a mask or getting too close or sneezing due to an allergy. The United States is going

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hysterically insane like Israel did in the promised land at the doorstep of the promised land. We're

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going hysterically insane too as this herd instinct drives us to complete self-destruction. Oh, as a

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young boy, I loved going over to my grandma's house for sleepovers. She was always so sweet and she

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doted on me and spoiled me. But early in the morning, she would cook breakfast for myself and grandfather.

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I remember one morning in particular, she was preparing breakfast. The little mouse started

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scurrying around the kitchen floor and my grandma completely panicked in hysterical fear. She threw

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a pan of eggs at it and went for her broom too. As she swung that broom, a pan of bacon went flying

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off the stove. That was the worst part of the day. Glass was shattered, china broken up in a thousand

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pieces. And by the time she came to her senses, the entire kitchen looked like a World War II movie set.

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And to top it off, the mouse got away. This is a metaphor for America, dear listener. Like my

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hysterical grandmother, America is in a state of panicked fear. It is destroying the country to get

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a little elusive ephemeral virus. My grandma's mouse got away in the end and there's already mounting

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evidence that no matter what we do, this virus has a path of its own, which must play out before we

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achieve that desired end that is herd immunity. But for now we have indeed herd instinct, don't we,

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that panics. But it's time to wake up from our collective hysteria, our self-righteous virtue

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signaling herd instinct delirium and get America back on its prime directive. And that's building

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a Christian constitutional republic. Oh, dear listener, I hope that we can indeed aspire

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then to a Christian constitutional republic in days to come. It is what God has destined us for,

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and it is indeed that to which we will come. Some of us will anyway. Others may fall behind,

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but some of us will persevere. May you persevere through this day and time, dear listener.

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And I would just exhort God's richest blessing on you and hope that this indeed is the case for you.

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This has been Pastor David Bass at New Geneva Orthodox Presbyterian Church. Call us to find out

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when and where we will be meeting in the future. You can call us at area code 208-523-0196. Area code 208-523-0196.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.