Category Archives: Constitution

UPDATE III (5/7/021): NEW COLUMN: Killing Liberty: Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?

Constitution, COVID-19, Ethics, Individual Rights, Science

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NEW COLUMN is “Killing Liberty: Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?” It is currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, (slightly abridged) on Townhall.com, CNSNew.com, and American Greatness.

Excerpt:

Because of the natural mutation the clever little RNA strand undergoes—it is clear to anyone with a critical mind that the Covid vaccines will go the way of the flu vaccines: An annual affair if one chooses to make it so.

Choice, alas, is quickly becoming a quaint concept in Covid-compliant America.

Vaccine Passports

The possibility of a vaccine passport, a “certification of vaccination that reduces public-health restrictions for their carriers,” has been floated. Unfinessed, it amounts to, “Your Papers, bitte!”

While Fox’s Tucker Carlson did term the idea an Orwellian one—it took civil libertarian Glenn Greenwald, the odd-man-out among the authoritarian Left, to place the concept of a vaccine passport in proper perspective.

The popular TV host (and perhaps the only good thing on Fox News) had asked Greenwald if he felt a vaccine passport “would work to convince more Americans to get vaccinated.”

Judging a policy by its positive outcomes for the collective, rather than by whether it violates individual rights is utilitarianism. It is the rule among politicians and pundits.

“It doesn’t work”: How often have you heard those words used to describe grave rights violations? As if using coercion to decrease “vaccine hesitancy”—is ever a good reason for coercing vaccination! As if employing coercion to decrease “vaccine hesitancy” is ever an appropriate use of State or corporate power!

The Benthamite utilitarian calculus is thus rightly associated with a collectivist, central-planner’s impetus.

The Founding Fathers, conversely, held a Blackstonian view of the law as a bulwark against government abuses. Their take has since been supplanted by the notion of the law as an implement of government, to be utilized by all-knowing rulers for the “greater good.”
To his great credit, Sean Hannity did advance a rights-based argument against the vaccine-passport outrage: the individual right to privacy.

It fell, however, to Mr. Greenwald to take note of the three different ways in which the passports constitute a draconian invasion:

…Number one, coercing citizens to put a substance into their body that they don’t want in their body, a pretty grave invasion of bodily autonomy, one of the most fundamental rights we have. Secondly, gathering a new database that can track people in terms of their health, that can easily be expanded as government programs often do into a whole variety of other uses, and then thirdly, … restricting people’s movement. Freedom of movement is one of the most fundamental rights we have. It’s actually guaranteed in the Constitution.  …

Herd immunity will be arrived at eventually, stressed Greenwald. So, “why is it necessary to stigmatize [those choosing not to vaccinate] and create a caste system?”

Enter U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, a Republican with a highly-contrived Southern act and overwrought cracks.

The visibly disappointed Mr. Hannity was expecting an erudite, rights-based objection from the senator representing Louisiana. On the matter of vaccine compliance through coercion, Kennedy only dimmed the debate. To the question about vaccine passports, Kennedy answered with a non sequitur:

A vaccine passport would be “terribly unethical,” Kennedy croaked, and not because it would threaten an individual’s dominion over his body, but because, “Everybody does not yet have access to the vaccine.” …

… READ ON. NEW COLUMN is “Killing Liberty: Could Vaccine Resisters Be WACO’d?” It is currently on WND.COM, The Unz Review, (slightly abridged) on Townhall.com,  CNSNew.com, and American Greatness.

UPDATED I (4/9):

Related, via David Vance: The Media (British and American) has become a “real and present menace” for refusing to critically and honestly report on Covid vaccines.

AND:

“22-year-old Israeli girl dies after 2nd shot of vaccine.”

UPDATE II (4/12):

Jake • 2 days ago:

“It’s all about the money. Huge profits for the vaccine companies and with no liability of those companies. What a business model! Meanwhile no one tells people what they can do either to prevent Covid-19 or to treat it effectively if you do get it. Why the secrecy?

This is what works:… along with vitamin D and zinc; and if you are not obese, are fit and have no heart or lung issues, you will be fine.

The hysteria by the media and medical bureaucrats is criminal.

I’m actually a real doctor, graduated in 1973. You obviously are ignorant about virology and transmissibility. I practice overseas, not in America. The American system is so wedded to these unproven, experimental injections. You have no idea about enhanced autoimmune response or anaphylaxis that is occurring at the moment.”

UPDATE III (5/7/021): Masks outdoors?

 

The Punishers Are Coming For MAGA America

Constitution, Donald Trump, Elections, Free Speech, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Multiculturalism, Republicans, The Therapuetic State

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People with names you must cut-and-paste to get right, like Azadeh Shahshahani, are increasingly and aggressively leading movements and initiatives to punish Americans with names like Marjorie Taylor, for voting to import fewer Punishers.

“Repealing the Muslim ban is not enough.” Shahshahani demands “accountability” in the name of “countless people whose lives were altered by the Muslim ban.” These victims of MAGA America are “still waiting for closure.”

Translated from a culture not-based in the Bill of Rights: They want revenge for the way Americans voted.

*Image courtesy ACLU, or what’s left of it.

UPDATE II (1/15/021): Make No Mistake, It Is Trump Voters Who’re Being Impeached In The House, Set Up For Persecution

Constitution, Criminal Injustice, Democrats, Donald Trump, Justice, Law

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Martyred twice—take the president’s second impeachment, passed impromptu in the House (Senate still to fold) with no due process of law afforded him whatsoever—as a badge of honor, a decoration of sorts ~ilana

 

And never forget, Deplorables, that it is you, in the person of Donald Trump, who are being impeached—it is you who are being set up for ouster and persecution. It is you who are being maligned as a “mob.”  It is you who’re being told you’re going to be “cleansed” from the body politic. President Trump is but a symbol, a catalyst.

MAGA men and women have been dubbed “Deplorables” (courtesy of Mrs. Clinton), “lizard brains” (via TV historian Jon Meacham), and, recently, “Jerks,” by Donny Deutsch, a lefty business-cum-media man, on MSNBC, who hollered that “there are 50 million jerks in this country.”

Correction: We are 74 million strong.

And we don’t forget.

FoxNews:

The House of Representatives Wednesday made history by voting to impeach President Trump for a second time for “incitement of insurrection” after a mob of his supporters besieged the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a failed attempt to stop the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college win. The House voted 232-197 to impeach the president. Ten Republicans joined with Democrats.

 UPDATE I:
 

Dan Crenshaw: what a tool, calls Liz Cheney someone with “a lot more backbone than most and is a principled leader with a fierce intellect. She will continue to be a much needed leader in the conference, with my full support.”

*  screen pic of impeachment squad courtesy Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

UPDATE II (1/15/021): Revolver News: If you like the concepts generated on my sites, give me credit, please. 

On January 13, I wrote this blog post (above), “It Is Trump Voters Who’re Being Impeached In The House, Set Up For Persecution.” It’s an idea. It’s only decent to credit others’ ideas.

On January 14, Revolver News wrote their cloning post: “Republicans Aren’t Voting to Impeach Trump, They’re Voting to Impeach You.” Some of my China posts—unique in their angle—have similarly reverberated. Come on! Let our side at least act ethically and cordially toward each other.

UPDATED (10/14): No Notes, No Nonsense: The Genius Of Amy Coney Barrett

Argument, Constitution, Democracy, Federalism, Intelligence, Law, Reason, The Courts

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After hysterical preludes, Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, questioned Amy Coney Barrett. I feared Barret’s tart tones—the American woman’s gravelly, vocal fry of a voice—would drive one to distraction, but she’s brilliant. Barrett looks disarmingly sweet and girly, but her replies are gloriously pointed and cerebral.

Advisory opinions are prohibited on the Court, Judge Coney Barrett teaches, as she explains a “concrete” as opposed to a “procedural” or “abstract” injury to the plaintiff. Her duty, as she sees it, is to address “concrete” wrongs, only, and in accordance with democratically-enacted law.

To the question of, “Why fight the Affordable Care Act, Amy Coney Barrett answered: “Ask the litigants. I don’t know.” Genius, because her replies are meta: They nail down the role of the SCOTUS in the federal scheme.

No doubt, Amy Coney Barrett will be the best mind on the SCOTUS! Her analytical reasoning—construction of an argument, the way she seals it logically, her preference for higher-order, principle- and process-oriented thinking, makes Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, Alito and Breyer pale by comparison. (Roberts is oriented toward administrative thinking; he has the mind of a functionary of the managerial State. As I pointed out in 2005, “Roberts is flummoxed by first-principle quandaries,” whereas first principles is Coney Barrett’s thing.)

For obvious reasons, Sonia Sotomayor was left off my just-cited list of SCOTUS justices whom Amy Coney Barrett easily usurps. An affirmative action baby (her term for herself), Sotomayor was advised to read children’s classics and basic grammar books during her summers, to get up to speed on her English skills at Princeton University. READ.

UPDATE (10/14):

Lots of cringe-worthy cliches and schmaltz came with the “quizzing” by Joni Ernst of Amy Coney Barrett. On being a mom, advice to young girls, exercise, role models. There is not daylight between Republican and liberal women, when it comes to this mushy drivel.