‘Welcome to West Virginia,” the sign read.
“Hey, I’m legal!” I noted.
We’d been visiting a convalescing friend in Lexington, VA, and had also used the trip as an opportunity to visit Appomattox the day before, a place I’d never been to. Now we were heading home, taking the eastern route to see some country we’d never been through before.
“Maryland Welcomes You,” a new sign said. “Wes Moore Governor.”
“Whoops, illegal.”
“Welcome to Pennsylvania,” the next sign read. “Josh Shapiro, Governor.”
“Still illegal.”
A few hours passed.
“Welcome to Ohio,” a new sign read.
“Legal again.”
Nothing about me or what I was doing had changed. Each one of the states we’d passed through had agreed to abide by the Constitution as a condition of membership in the Union.
Without admitting I was doing anything but exercising my rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, who was undermining the Blessings of Liberty and breaking “the supreme Law of the Land” here?