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Comment by __blockcipher__ | Hacker News Reader

Ah but that’s the irony. In the US the young overwhelmingly vote for the side that supports these authoritarian shutdowns. I remember when the authoritarians were on the right and the freedom lovers on the left. Oh, how times have changed.

(Compare South Dakota, right-leaning and NEVER locked down, to my home state of California, which is so democrat-leaning that we’re a de facto single party state)

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Enforcing sensible public health policy in the middle of a raging, deadly, global pandemic is hardly authoritarian. We are being asked to put a little piece of cloth over our faces and to stay at home when we don’t have to go out. Yet people are acting like we are being loaded onto the trains. Have we so completely lost our sense of perspective?

We're talking here about an order to prohibit all gatherings among young people. That's a huge restriction of 1a right to peaceable assembly.

I happen to think mask mandates are ridiculous too but that's besides the point.

It is not without precedent. Courts have upheld government's power to enforce curfews, which limit gatherings of adults, to protect public safety and property. I would like to see a court weigh in the constitutionality of a curfew for the narrow purpose of protecting the public from a pandemic. You may end up being right. I don't think the SCOTUS has weighed in on curfews yet.

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