I'M JUST AN ARBITRARY TRANSVESTITE FROM TRANSGRESSIVE PENNSYLVANIA.

Kurt Schlichter lives in California, and, not surprisingly, most of the action in his series of too-prefigurative novels about the collapse of the blue social model are set there.

But then you see the self-appointed dictators of Pennsylvania, and you wonder where else the insanity will surface.

Joe Hermitt photograph retrieved from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

That's Commonwealth Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, a male-to-female crosser, announcing some unconstitutional diktat or other while governor Tom Wolf, and isn't he the very model of a Silent Generation college administrator in over his head, looks on.  Your Glorious Progressive Future, right?  Wrong, I wrote unconstitutional for a reason.

In a measured opinion, U.S. District Judge William Stickman IV declared restrictions on gathering sizes, business closures and the stay-at-home order to have been unlawful infringements under the First and 14th amendments .

He’s right to acknowledge that state officials were acting in good faith to protect the public and that this isn’t the first time the government has infringed upon individual liberties during an emergency.

However, the indefinite length of the restrictions and lack of an exit strategy are critical factors: “It is now September and the record makes clear that Defendants have no anticipated end-date to their emergency interventions,” Mr. Stickman wrote.

Put another way, what began as a way to protect citizens has evolved into an inconsistent application of penalties and punishments.

Of course this is unconstitutional.

The governor is still resisting the logic of "limited in scope and duration," but sic semper tyrannis.  The people are the principals, the legislators are the agents, and the governor has only a veto power and limited and enumerated emergency powers.  The end of the arbitrary ukases cannot come too soon.

The fact that hundreds of small businesses have been forced to close and thousands of Pennsylvanians have been forced to sign up for unemployment is not a conspiracy. The heartbreak of families kept apart and elderly relatives passing away alone in nursing homes while mass public funerals continue to be held for public figures is immoral. And legally, the restrictions can be reinitiated any time the state determines that the virus is spreading too quickly.

Enough.

Most Americans support commonsense safety measures like masking and social distancing, but the time for devastating and draconian exercises of state authority is long past. America’s commitment to individual liberty does not account for Mr. Wolf’s “new normal,” and constitutional principles are not fair-weather propositions.

Perhaps the past six months of fifteen days to slow the spread have made clear exactly how scary "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you" really is.

What you're experiencing is the Democrats' belief that government through experts creates bureaucracies that know better than you do about what's important to you.  In a nutshell, that's the progressive Democrats' prime selling point and has been since Woodrow Wilson: we're the experts, and we know better.  Most of the time, though, bureaucrats don't know better.

I've long felt that we need most government regulations only when people cannot easily or reasonably acquire important information on their own.

Even there, it's useful to have the simplest and most transparent regulations, as the people with local knowledge are going to anticipate many of the adverse consequences better than a lawyer drafting rules consistent with the enabling legislation.  If the China virus leads to a broader skepticism of Governance by Wise Experts, that has to count as a good thing.

I'll give Reason's J. D. Tuccille the final word, and the deep word.  "[N]ot just the constitutionality but the effectiveness of lockdowns is up for debate."  The lawsuits proliferate, as does the collateral damage.  There's going to be more to come, but the internet is slow and it's suppertime.