The Constitutional case for the right to party. Shaming and excoriation by the Safety Cult members has always existed, and so have those who told them fuck off. Interesting read for history and law nerds. Lots of links in the article.
Why Americans Should Fight Unconstitutional Lockdown Orders For Our Right To Party
The best case for a right to party is in the right of assembly, placed in the Bill of Rights as many deadly diseases threatened the American population.
In Alexander Pushkin’s “Feast in a Time of Plague,” an old priest returning from a mass funeral of plague victims catches young people partying, and unleashes a 19th-century rant: “A godless banquet, godless madmen all … Go back now to your homes!” “Be off, old man!” The partygoers yell back in a period version of “OK, Boomer.” Another tells the priest: “Our homes are sad. And youth is fond of joyousness.”
Human nature remains constant despite the passage of time. Young Florentines still partied through the Black Death. William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet fell in love at a dance party during a plague in Verona. Authorities, like Pushkin’s priest, reacted to epidemics with repressive measures that often did more harm than good. Romeo, after all, killed himself when a plague lockdown prevented the news that Juliet was still alive from reaching him.
It was then as it is now with COVID-19 today: most people are still fond of joyousness. Our modern governments are still trying to stop young people are still trying to party with medieval plague control measures, even if in language less florid than Pushkin’s.
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[Final paragraph:]
“It is from petty tyrannies that large ones take root and grow,” the Supreme Court warned in a ruling on assembly rights. Men and women who achieve positions of power are always hungry for more. Fighting for a universal right to party these holidays, through the courts — and, if need be, mass civil disobedience — is a quintessentially American, bipartisan, and winnable cause.