printNEW 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.
- Image credit: By Sergio Photone
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):
“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?
Medics are so dumb. Sorry, Twitter, I misspoke; I meant smart. Humble Toadwart, here, must be the dumb one, because he (my alter-ego) has been running outdoors forever sans #mask. And he's no mask denier. https://t.co/eKJwCppSll pic.twitter.com/qEQWFuzMDv
— ILANA Mercer (@IlanaMercer) April 28, 2021
Your critique of the superficial objections to the covid passport notion is excellent for pointing out the philosophical fundamentals of the issue. Thanks for your comments.
I am very concerned about a proposed vaccine passport. Primarily I am concerned about the safety of this new kind of vaccine since the Chief Science Officer for Canada called its mass vaccination on Canadians “a human experiment”! I am terribly troubled about this kind of social pressure to get the vaccine, because anyone who does not is shunned from friends and family and is accused of being radical. A vaccine passport will divide families, friends and communities. I have not received my vaccine. I have never received a flu shot. I have a great deal of mistrust for pharmaceuticals and the methods by which they approve and market their products in Canada.