Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
It’s Time For the Government to Step In
We thought we could trust you to make the right decision, but obviously, you care more about yourself than you do the life of another. You value your own freedom over someone else’s life, someone else’s beating heart. Have you no shame, no remorse, no sympathy for the pain you inflicted upon another?
We’re having a few national conversations at once: On abortion and on vaccination for COVID-19. We’re hearing a lot of “my body my choice” from the national media and liberal thought-leaders, while on vaccination, Americans are increasingly being denied any semblance of bodily autonomy for the sake of the herd.
The arguments are shockingly inconsistent: Women are allowed total freedom over their own bodies, their own choices, even though their decision to abort results in the cessation of another human being’s heartbeat 100% of the time. Pair that with the decision not to vaccinate: Your actions could harm another, passing on a virus that might make someone have a mild cold at best, or dead at worst. Both decisions involve maintaining bodily autonomy; one always results in another’s death, and the other could. And yet, liberals view the right to abort as sacrosanct and the decision to forgo vaccination as literal murder.
I say this as someone who used some creativity to get vaccinated ahead of “my time”: President Biden’s announcement today about vaccine mandates is medical tyranny. It is shocking we are having a conversation about millions of Americans being told to choose between their livelihoods and a shot. This isn’t the first time Americans have had their livelihoods threatened and ripped away by the force of the government these last two years. There was hardly a peep when millions of small business owners saw the government rip away everything they had built; the courts didn’t step in, there were no massive protest movements, no cry of alarm from the press. Just quiet acquiescence. I hope that these latest moves by the Biden administration will hit walls when the public and judiciary grow not just outraged, but alarmed, at the terrifying overreach. But I’m jaded: if the government can decimate entire industries and halt our way of life for over a year without a peep, I don’t expect there to be much pushback against this latest announcement. How far is too far? Is there even such a thing anymore?
Published in General
No, there isn’t. With American children coddled from babyhood, and protected from anything the least bit upsetting; then indoctrinated in the Churches of Environmentalism and Anti-Racism, the American public is too focused on being protected from life, even at the loss of their liberty.
Biden’s approach is unscientific, unconstitutional and dangerous. He ignores natural immunity. A fair percentage of the unvaccinated have had COVID and don’t need the jab. Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has pointed out that the vaccinated and unvaccinated have about the same risk of transmitting COVID so vaccine requirements are unnecessary. http://front.player.fm/series/the-sharyl-attkisson-podcast/natural-immunity-masks-lockdowns-and-ade-dr-jay-bhattacharya-on-everything-covid-19 Dr Robert Malone states that mass vaccinations in a pandemic encourages the evolution of variants. One should only vaccinate the vulnerable. Thus, getting vaccinated if you are at low risk, less than 50 years old with no comorbidities, could endanger grandma. Biden has no power to do this even in the penumbras of the Constitution. If we allow this to stand, there are no limits on presidential powers.
I cannot equate wearing a face diaper or receiving an experimental (but “approved”) shot with killing the inconvenient.
It’s time for government to step out. I’d rather shoot my way to freedom, warts and all, than trust this gang. Or any other gang.
Tomorrow Biden is giving a presser entitled “Five out of six Russian roulette players insist Russian Roulette is safe.”
I have it on good authority that this is nothing to get upset about.
But what if you have a group of people who go door to door to every home in America? That type of activity could really spread the disease. So surely postal workers should be vaccinated . . . Oh wait, evidently your union status can provide immunity.
It’s easy for them to have this view because they ignore the fact there’s a baby involved . . .
I too have been worried that I might need to shoot my way out as well. After we killed many of our fellow Americans who we would have beers with a few years before, what is the likelihood of a classical liberal like myself agreeing about a government with a Confederate enthusiast such as yourself and creating a new form of government that could unify the rebellious states?
This is not a convincing argument for anyone who opposes abortion.
There is a decent argument for the inconsistency between someone who supports abortion on the basis of the “my body, my choice” argument, while simultaneously supporting a vaccine mandate. Such a person might respond that the circumstances are different, as there are third-party effects of a lack of vaccination which do not exist in the case of abortion. That would resolve the apparent inconsistency.
What is very strange is for someone who opposes abortion to adopt the “my body, my choice” argument to oppose vaccination, while rejecting that same argument in the case of abortion. It seems to me that this is the approach taken by the OP.
For the record, I oppose abortion and I oppose most of the vaccination mandate recently announced by President Biden.
The one portion of the vaccination mandate about which I am undecided relates to medical providers, which I think are included in President Biden’s policy, though I have not investigated it in detail. I see a stronger argument for mandating vaccination among, for example, people who work at nursing homes, as a way of protecting a particularly vulnerable population.
I think that’s the OP addressed. The whole “my body, my choice” is entirely an excuse for abortion and lefties don’t really believe it. Pro-abortion people need to make better arguments.
I’m not a confederate enthusiast. I don’t think this will be a matter of states. Who said create a new form of government? That’s Progressive hogwash.
There’s nothing wrong with the design of our government. It no longer functions as designed, and has fallen to a coup. The right answer would be a restoration. I am not interested in University duck-pond debates over forms.
To restore the government to function, the decades-long delegation of ever-increasing powers to the administrative state would have to be rolled WAY back. This is a matter of funding and staffing, and of laws. Well, those options are increasingly out of reach now — that’s how this coup works. We have been dispossessed of our rights to a representative government.
I don’t see how we vote that back in — our votes are already meaningless QED the last election, and frankly, the smaller scale steals in 2012. Not like it’s some new thing. It has been rolling along, and some of us are waking up to its extent.
This may get bumpy.
If you conflate first, a generalized, fractional responsibility for a vanishingly small change in the likelyhood of somebody somewhere getting sick with second, a 100% individual murder, then yes, you would see an inconsistency in a person asserting sovereignty over the physical self.
And obviously, there actually is a “third” party in abortion — that’s the whole point.