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No Taxation without representation. Remember that slogan? It played a big role in the birth of the United States. Even the most reticent history student must know that a representative government, one “… deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” is a central feature of both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

However, what has taken place on both the state and federal level since early last year is that the president and many, if not all, governors were handed, by the respective legislatures, an authoritarian power. That means, by definition and in reality, that with all the COVID-19 mandates we have been being subjected to government without representation. Should such an abdication of representative responsibility ever be permitted?

All the closed businesses, all the lost jobs, all the isolation, with all the harmful effects which have occurred along with it, have been by authoritarian dictate. That is exactly what America’s founders sought to escape and avoid. What has been determining the mandates is not the observations, the realities and wishes of the people, but numbers on a page manipulated by statisticians and bureaucrats. Our “data daddies” is how I have heard one Seattle radio talk show host refer to them. They are amplified by a media all too eager to support the authoritarian reality.

Would we still be experiencing, would we ever have experienced, the sweeping shut-downs that have been taking place if the reference point for the severity of the COVID-19 impact and all subsequent reactions had been based on the perceptions, needs and desires of the people of Washington rather than tests and spreadsheets? How much more authoritarian “caretaking” can our communities survive?

It is time, past time, our representative governmental functions be fully restored.

Ken Dunning

Mount Vernon