LATimes, which never saw a leftist columnist it didn’t like, carries column by Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Berkeley Law School, who never saw a progressive program he didn’t think was legal. Chemerinsky states that everyone could be required to take the vaccine, with no religious exemptions allowed.

He twice mentions delta variant, to be sure we are adequately frightened. He does not mention that all three vaccines were made with human fetal cell lines. He does not mention that states of emergency have already lasted 1½ years and show no signs of ending, during which governors rule by decree. He refers to “law” but does not mention there is no law – no law for lockdowns, no law for masks, no law for vaccines. All are executive orders passed by no legislatures.

And once the delta variant recedes, there will surely be another to scare us into obedience. And once Covid declines, climate change will be the next “existential threat” justifying rule by decree.

It has been said that pandemic rules are a dress rehearsal for totalitarianism. Wrong. They already are totalitarianism. The fact that progressive law deans approve them tells us all we need to know.

In the film “Bananas,” Woody Allen describes a tin-pot dictator who goes power crazy. He orders everyone to wear their underwear over their clothes, so police can check their cleanliness. Allen thought this was so absurd as to be funny. It was then. But now it isn’t at all funny.

Pandemic rules are justified by reason of public health, but what could be more healthful than clean underwear? What Woody Allen saw as slapstick humor, Erwin Chemerinsky might see as constitutional. That really says something about where we are today.

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