May 4, 2021 at 8:13 a.m.
Don't force the vaccines, or the national anthem, either
Don't force the vaccines, or the national anthem, either
Both actions deeply trespass on the civil liberties of Wisconsinites, and both are potentially dangerous from a public health perspective.
Let's take religion first. To begin with, there is the absolute matter of constitutionality, which Evers dismisses with a sneer. But the state is not constitutionally allowed to make any law - and that also goes for rules and orders with the force of law - that prohibits or obstructs the free exercise of religion. There are no exceptions. It doesn't get any simpler than that.
What's more, the state allowed liquor stores to stay open while closing churches. The issue here isn't that crowded churches posed a more infectious threat than a liquor store with a few customers, which may be true; the issue is that the state acknowledged people might need a drink to help get them through the pandemic while dismissing the spiritual imperatives of those desiring to pray and worship together in a crisis.
That was an unconstitutional political bias against the freedom of religion, and with his veto the governor has embraced it. Evers' refusal to rule out mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations is likewise telling and betrays his authoritarian instincts even more.
As Julaine Appling of Wisconsin Family Action said in support of the bill to prohibit forced COVID-19 vaccines, the issue is not the efficacy or the necessity of the vaccine but personal responsibility and choice. We agree with her that deciding to take a vaccine is a deeply personal matter.
Simply put, a government that can force its way into an individual's body, especially bearing experimental drugs, which we will get to in a moment, is a totalitarian government. There is no freedom in a society in which individuals are deprived of their most private and intimate choice: what to put into or not put into their bodies.
Proponents of mandatory vaccination point to a pivotal U.S. Supreme Court case in 1905 that the state could impose reasonable medical interventions, including mandatory vaccinations. But they neglect to mention that rulings since then have emphasized that decision was not a green light for universal vaccine mandates.
In 1905, justice John Marshall Harlan asserted that "unreasonable, arbitrary or oppressive" vaccination mandates could violate the Fourteenth Amendment if mandates are "exercised in particular circumstances and in reference to particular persons in such an arbitrary, unreasonable manner, or might go so far beyond what was reasonably required for the safety of the public, as to authorize or compel the courts to interfere for the protection of such persons."
Likewise, justice Robert Jackson wrote in his concurrence in Skinner that "(t)here are limits to the extent to which a legislatively represented majority may conduct biological experiments at the expense of ... a minority ..."
We think that good arguments can be made that COVID-19 vaccination mandates are both unreasonable, arbitrary, and oppressive, and that the vaccines are, at this point, little more than biological experiments.
To that latter point, we all bounce the term "vaccine" around, but the COVID-19 shots are not traditional vaccines - they don't use weakened or inactivated germs to trigger an immune response - they are mRNA drugs that use molecules to relay genetic instructions to teach our cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response.
It's not really gene therapy, either, but it's definitely not a vaccine. What it is an experiment that has never before been used on humans and it is producing record numbers of adverse event reports, including severe illness and death. The drugs have not been formally approved, and to compel someone to take a vaccine that has only been approved for emergency use is madness.
It would seem to violate justice Jackson's view that the majority cannot impose biological experiments on the minority. What's more, to force those who have virtually no risk of death from the virus to take the drug is both arbitrary and unreasonable.
The truth is, our governments are lying when they tell us the vaccines are safe and effective without qualification, as the CDC does on its website. Vaccine collateral damage may be acceptable to public health officials, and has been for years, but the straight truth, with a side of choice, should be the menu we read from now.
One last question, though, for those who absolutely believe the government and have rushed out to get the vaccine. Why do you give a hoot whether others do? After all, your government is assuring you the vaccine is both safe and effective, and, if it's effective, then you won't be infected or endangered by those heathens who refuse to inject an experimental drug into themselves.
We close with a word of caution to some very smug Republicans who know they are on the right side of this issue, the issue being liberty. Sometimes, though, in their policy zeal, they forget that the real issue is not the specific policy at hand, but the foundation beneath it, that is, the preservation of the right of individual choice and the need to prohibit government mandates that rob us of that choice.
That's what civil liberty is all about.
Several years ago, Republicans came up with a wrongheaded idea that government was going to tell those receiving food stamps what food they could buy and what food they couldn't. Apparently Republicans figured that lower income folks were just too stupid to buy what was good for them, and, of course, the Republicans would know what was nutritious.
Talk about neo-liberalism.
We remarked at the time that empowerment comes with choice, and people need as many choices as possible. That's the way a successful life is learned. To be sure, too many people were on food stamps, and that ship needed to be tightened up, but once a person legitimately qualified, the choice of what products to buy should reside with that person, expect for the most obvious prohibitions such as alcohol and tobacco.
The truth is, families know what food they need to buy a whole lot better than some fat-cat nanny state Republicans in Madison.
Thankfully, that bid was defeated, but now these GOP types are at it again, introducing a bill that would require the playing of the national anthem before sporting events at all venues that took at least some public money when built.
It's baloney.
Don't get us wrong. We love hearing the national anthem played before games as much as the next patriot, but it's not something government should force. Compelling someone to play the anthem - or listen to it - does nothing to promote patriotic feelings.
Here's what the lawmakers pushing this bill are really doing: They are virtue signaling, telling everybody just how patriotic they are, and how they are going to prove it by making everyone, including those despised kneelers, listen to it.
They are no better than those who virtue signal by pushing mask mandates and who wear them even in Zoom meetings.
The anthem should not be used as a political football. Venues should play the anthem when they and their fans want it and appreciate it, which is likely the vast majority of the country's venues. Sports players should follow their conscience in kneeling or standing, as they choose, and sports teams should adopt their own policies when it comes to allowing such gestures.
But, by all means, keep the government out of all of it. Government actions almost always muddy the waters and make things worse, and mandates that slice and dice away the freedom to choose do so even more.
An anthem that is played only because the government orders it to be played is really nothing more an anthem to totalitarianism. Go China, ur, Badgers!
Republicans are right when to comes to religious liberty and vaccine mandates; but when it comes to their sugar plum visions of how they want people to act in this world, they should resist the temptation to force people into compliance.
Now would be a good time to reread the lectures they are giving to Democrats these days.
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