It’s astounding to see a purportedly “peaceful” person engage in threats of assault. It’s even more stunning to see said person act as if doing so is peaceful and “for your own good.”
But that is precisely what Virginia State Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver is doing.
According to Jackie DeFusco and Emma North of WRIC, ABC8:
State Health Commissioner Dr. Norman Oliver told 8News on Friday that he plans to mandate coronavirus vaccinations for Virginians once one is made available to the public.
He also told WRIC:
It is killing people now, we don’t have a treatment for it and if we develop a vaccine that can prevent it from spreading in the community we will save hundreds and hundreds of lives.
So, on a practical level, one might tell this “Health Commissioner” that, even if one believes the government-inflated figures, the fatality rate of COVID19 is comparable to that of the seasonal flu. And then one might ask Dr. Oliver if he is prepared to mandate flu vaccines every year he occupies the tax-eating, coercive office from which he issues his authoritarian plans. After all, it “will save hundreds and hundreds of lives.”
Unless those lives wanted to live free and stood up for their rights, because if that’s the case, Dr. Oliver’s mandate will see the armed force of the state go after people, sucking up more of their money and threatening the very lives that the good doctor claims he is “protecting” with his threats.
Isn’t it great to see how government works?
Then there’s the not-so-great track record of some previous vaccines. For example, in the 1970s, the federal government – including President Gerald Ford – unnecessarily frightened millions of people to get the Swine Flu vaccine. The result was that hundreds and hundreds of people fell ill with Guillain-Barre, a debilitating neurological disorder that was traced back to the vaccine. And the Swine Flu? It was nowhere near as deadly as predicted.
The 1950s saw the polio vaccine cause polio in at least 250 people, nationwide – more than would have gotten the disease naturally.
And, last year, a mutation in an oral polio vaccine delivered to children in Africa caused… yep, polio, in larger numbers than the natural instances of the disease in the continental population.
And what of the “law?”
Dr. Oliver claims to have the backing of a Virginia statute allowing the government to mandate a vaccine in a “public health emergency.” The statute allows for a “medical exemption” from the jab, and state politicians are considering an expansion of the exemption, to include religious reasons:
The Virginia General Assembly is considering a bill during an ongoing special session that would allow people with religious opposition to opt-out of the requirement. The bill needs to clear a committee in the House of Delegates before the full chamber could vote on it.
DeFusco and North note that Oliver opposes the idea of a religious exemption.
Which means that, if he has his way, people who know that abortion is the murder of a human being also will be required to accept a “vaccine” that might be derived from a line created via aborted fetuses.
And Oliver’s claim to be able to force vaccination is blatantly unconstitutional. The assumption of power to find out if people are vaccinated breaches the Fourth Amendment prohibition against unwarranted search and seizure. The physical attack of state-mandated vaccinations runs contrary to the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment (since there has been no trial to cite a citizen for a “wrong”, there can be no punishment). Philosophers since the Enlightenment have understood that human beings have a “property” ownership in themselves, so the government commandeering a human body to force something into it is clearly a “taking,” which the Fifth Amendment prohibits in part, and which the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits in full.
And, as I wrote for MRCTV in June, if anyone like Oliver argues that the state has a so-called “public health police power,” the person is way off base - constitutionally, logically, and morally.
Often, federal-level politicians, and some on the state-level, claim that there is an “implied public health police power” hiding in the “General Welfare” clause of the US Constitution.
But that clause that doesn’t spell out any enumerated power. The Constitution specifies the branches, enumerated powers, and amendments, and lays out how the Founders intended these goals to be achieved. By setting the goal of promoting the “General Welfare” they meant prosperity through voluntary market exchange, not redistribution of wealth or mandates of vaccination, since that makes all residents potential targets for government aggression, and runs counter to the goal of insuring liberty, justice, or the so-called rationale for the state itself: property and liberty protection against attacks by other people.
Yet these potential assaulters continue to make threats, and some cite the insane 1905 Supreme Court decision in a case called Jacobson v. Massachusetts, a case that saw the court invent a “public health police power” for states that doesn’t exist, and a case that soon saw politicians in Indiana pass a law allowing for the forced sterilization of people the state deemed “feeble-minded”, and subsequently saw 30,000+ people sterilized in 29 states between 1907 and 1939.
The practice of U.S. politicians and bureaucrats claiming a “public health police power” to control citizens became so widespread that Adolf Hitler took notice, writing:
There is today one state in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of citizenship] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States.
All that, thanks to one group of people misreading the Constitution and others claiming power.
And, even if there were some “power” in the US Constitution claiming that politicians could forcibly inject people, no such moral authority ever could be claimed. Not one of us explicitly signed on to the Constitution. The US government, like all government, is forced on us, and no one can claim that we “tacitly” accept its rule simply because we don’t flee to some other locale.
But the authoritarians will use any justification, any rationale, to claim more control over us and our progeny. And they will not be without supporters.
As Derrick Broze writes for The Last American Vagabond, a recent study looks at what is called “parasite stress,” and how people under the threat of disease pathogens tend to increase their preference for authoritarian states.
The researchers also found that society tends to promote a collectivist worldview, favoring obedience and conformity from the population, in response to parasites (disease pathogens).
The battle lines are clear, as are the decisions each of us must make. Either we fall prey to the statist authoritarian mindset of Dr. Oliver, or we stand for freedom.
If someone wants to get a vaccine injection, he or she is free to do so, but people are not free to force others to get the jab.
And that is even more important to remember when it comes to the force of government.