In a recent article, our state Sen. Danny Britt compared Gov. Cooper’s shelter-in-place order to something you would find in a history book about Mao’s China. Britt’s right-wing rhetoric couldn’t be further from the truth.
A search of the former China leader Mao Zedong will lead you to find that Mao was an extreme communist whose “Cultural Revolution” led to massive chaos, which resulted in widespread hunger, millions of deaths, and persecution for the people of China.
Britt’s view is that the governor’s executive order prohibits churches from operating under the same conditions as retail establishments, mainly grocery stores, which remain open, and restaurants, which can do take-out and delivery. What Britt knows as an attorney, but fails to project, is the governor has the executive power to protect the health and safety of the people of North Carolina during a public health pandemic via police powers reserved to the states under the Constitution.
Instead, Britt chooses to use strong divisive rhetoric to not only get his base energized, but to cause further partisanship and deep divide at a time when it’s not needed and at a time when the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in N.C. continue to rise. Even the world-renowned Centers for Disease and Control & Prevention has issued guidelines to stop the spread of COVID-19, which includes canceling large social gatherings; and just last month, the American Bar Association stated that “lawsuits challenging Covid-19 quarantines and restrictions on public gatherings may be doomed to failure.”
Sen. Britt would be better off focusing his time and energy on more important matters in his district instead of playing partisan politics. After all, when it comes to the issues of public education, economic development, and poverty, these are all areas where his district has some of the direst statistics in North Carolina.
Brian Bell
Lumberton