Ear­li­er today, in Taco­ma, Social Dar­win­ists Tim Eyman and his cronies Stephen Pid­geon and Clint Didi­er held an event in Taco­ma to pro­mote the fil­ing of a mali­cious fed­er­al law­suit against Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee that seeks to sig­nif­i­cant­ly cur­tail the emer­gency pow­ers that Inslee has been using to pro­tect the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton State from SARS-CoV­‑2, the nov­el coronavirus.

Jim Brun­ner reports:

Repub­li­can guber­na­to­r­i­al can­di­date Tim Eyman joined Franklin Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Clint Didi­er and some small-busi­ness own­ers in suing Gov. Jay Inslee in fed­er­al court Fri­day, con­tend­ing the governor’s stay-home order to pre­vent spread of the coro­n­avirus has imposed “unac­cept­able tyranny.”

The law­suit, which is seek­ing class-action sta­tus, was filed in U.S. Dis­trict Court for the West­ern Dis­trict of Washington.

In a news con­fer­ence in front of the fed­er­al cour­t­house in Taco­ma, Eyman and oth­er plain­tiffs railed against Inslee’s “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order as tyran­ni­cal and argued that state busi­ness­es and schools should be reopened.

Didi­er said Wash­ing­to­ni­ans should be allowed to min­gle again, argu­ing spread­ing the dis­ease would be a pos­i­tive devel­op­ment and build immu­ni­ty. “We can take care of this virus by let­ting the peo­ple catch it,” he said.

Revolt­ing. Dis­turb­ing. Immoral. (Empha­sis is mine.)

Con men like Clint Didi­er, Tim Eyman, and Stephen Pid­geon are not just out of their minds. They’re a men­ace. A dan­ger to us, our fam­i­lies, and our future.

Dis­graced ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman con­fers with his pal Clint Didi­er, a peren­ni­al­ly unsuc­cess­ful can­di­date for Con­gress and statewide office, at a hear­ing in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court in Feb­ru­ary of 2020 (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

That’s why I have been active­ly work­ing to oppose their rad­i­cal, destruc­tive agen­da for almost twen­ty years. I found­ed NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense project in Feb­ru­ary of 2002 because I could no longer jus­ti­fy remain­ing on the side­lines as Eyman and his asso­ciates waged war on Wash­ing­ton State’s essen­tial pub­lic services.

I was too young then to vote. But not too young to speak out or orga­nize. So up went Per­ma­nent Defense… and NPI, the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, fol­lowed a year and a half lat­er. The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, this blog, was launched in March of 2004, and has now been con­tin­u­ous­ly pub­lished for over six­teen years.

It has been said that the price of lib­er­ty is eter­nal vig­i­lance, and it is true. A free soci­ety can be destroyed from with­in all too eas­i­ly. Our hard-won rights and free­doms must be con­tin­u­ous­ly defend­ed, or they will be lost.

Here, we have a gang of unscrupu­lous con men who are pur­port­ing to defend free­dom. In real­i­ty, they are attack­ing it. Their objec­tive is to deprive oth­er peo­ple of their lives because they do not val­ue life. Instead, they val­ue a bro­ken eco­nom­ic sys­tem that is utter­ly fail­ing the peo­ple of this country.

Their val­ues are not Wash­ing­ton’s val­ues and not Amer­i­ca’s values.

This coun­try was found­ed on the belief that life comes first, as I have pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten. Life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness are per­haps the most famous words in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence. Life comes first, and right­ly so.

There is noth­ing pro-life about the behav­ior or world­views of these men, all of who claim to be reli­gious, God-fear­ing men (even Eyman, at times).

No real Chris­t­ian would act or think like they do. True Chris­tians love their neigh­bor as them­selves and put oth­ers first. They would nev­er seek to delib­er­ate­ly expose any­one to a dead­ly virus. True Chris­tians do not engage in a search for a supe­ri­or moral jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for self­ish­ness, as most right wingers do.

In Matthew 6:24, Jesus says that it is not pos­si­ble to love both God and money.

“No one can serve two mas­ters,” Jesus says in that Gospel pas­sage. “He will either hate one and love the oth­er, or be devot­ed to one and despise the other.”

“You can­not serve God and mammon.”

It is bad enough that we have covid­iots… peo­ple like spring break­er Brady Slud­er who put them­selves at risk pri­mar­i­ly because they are igno­rant or immature.

At least Slud­er learned his les­son. As he said:

I’ve done a lot of things in my life that I’m not proud of. I’ve failed, I’ve let down, and I’ve made plen­ty of mis­takes. I can’t apol­o­gize enough to the peo­ple I’ve offend­ed and the lives I’ve insulted.

I’m not ask­ing for your for­give­ness, or pity.

I want to use this as moti­va­tion to become a bet­ter per­son, a bet­ter son, a bet­ter friend, and a bet­ter citizen.

Lis­ten to your com­mu­ni­ties and do as health offi­cials say. Life is pre­cious. Don’t be arro­gant and think you’re invin­ci­ble like myself. I’ve learned from these try­ing times and I’ve felt the reper­cus­sions to the fullest. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, sim­ply apol­o­giz­ing doesn’t jus­ti­fy my behav­ior. I’m sim­ply own­ing up to my mis­takes and tak­ing full respon­si­bil­i­ty for my actions. Thank you for your time, and stay safe every­one. ❤️

Life is precious.

Indeed it is, and kudos to Slud­er for rec­og­niz­ing that and say­ing that. Slud­er erred, but he showed respon­si­bil­i­ty and com­pas­sion after he con­tract­ed COVID-19 him­self. He apol­o­gized and set out to make things right by pub­licly dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple from copy­ing the bad exam­ple he set. We appre­ci­ate his vow to become a bet­ter per­son who makes more respon­si­ble deci­sions in the future.

The same can­not be said of the peo­ple who filed this far­ci­cal law­suit against Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, sev­er­al of whom are unsuc­cess­ful can­di­dates for high office, includ­ing Pid­geon and Didi­er. (Eyman is cur­rent­ly run­ning for high office for the first time, against Inslee.) The peo­ple who filed this law­suit appear to under­stand that SARS-CoV­‑2 is a grave pub­lic health threat. And they don’t care.

Let the fittest sur­vive.… the weak can just keel over and die the way nature intend­ed. If their body can’t beat SARS-CoV­‑2, well, that’s just too bad, isn’t it?

What a dis­gust­ing, un-Chris­t­ian attitude.

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Bob Fer­gu­son has beat­en these same peo­ple in court before — he and his staff know Pid­geon, Eyman, and Didi­er well — and I’m con­fi­dent in their abil­i­ty to defend the peo­ple of the State of Wash­ing­ton from this reck­less and sin­is­ter effort to end our efforts to pro­tect Wash­ing­to­ni­ans from this virus.