“You have no Constitutional right to endanger the public and spread the disease,” according to Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who was part of President Trump’s impeachment defense team. Dershowitz tells Jason Goodman on Crowdsource the Truth that the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives states the power to protect the public health, citing a 1905 Supreme Court decision, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, allowing authorities to take you to a doctor’s office and “plunge a needle into your arm.”
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37 replies on “States Can Force COVID-19 Vaccination: “Plunge a Needle into Your Arm””
FREEDOM is defined as “the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint, we do have some freedom of choice.” Even in a Society that allows the individual “Freedom” the government can step in when the FREE Choice of an individual invades the FREEDOM of another person. Freedom does have consequences, BOTYH intended and unintended. Therefore, when an individual exercises his/her Freedom, the BIG question is CAN? the others members or the presiding government step in to curtail the individual’s FREEDOM?
Is the government then able to restrict a citizen’s CHOICE, their FREEDOM for the GOOD? of the larger Society by protecting the Society from a BAD Choice of one individual toward the many?
Are not ALL Choices, the FREEDOM to make them protected?
Common Sense is being crushed down into near invisible microscopic particles.
Within this controversial idea of removing one’s FREEDOM to Choose to accommodate others, I would contend that THERE is very VERY thin line between FREEDOM and TYRANNY of the others. Does THE CONCEPT present a gigantic Problem? At the same time, using Common Sense and then applying Critical Thinking skills using Logic and Reasoning to make a coherent case for FREEDOM. There are Reasonable mitigating steps that can be used to GREATLY reduce the risk to others. Those mitigating factors are at this moment being used to protect others while at the very same time allowing the individual. individuals and/or business to operate in trying times without completely removing CHOICE/FREEDOM.
Taking Professor Dershowitz’s position ONLY answers the question, Is the virus a Serious potentially dangerous Disease? The answer is obvious BUT that is the wrong question to ask. I do believes that the right question to start the conversation based on reliable scientific Data and Evidence, HOW? serious is the Disease and WHAT? are the risk Factors?
FREEDOm is a scared RIGHT guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence with “unalienable rights and written into the US Constitution & its BILL of RIGHTS. BOTH of the Founding Documents were vehicles to PROTECT the Individual from the TYRANNY of government as envisioned by the Founders and Framers.
Americans are not stupid? Then how in the hell did Nancy Pelosi ever win an election?
Her District voted for her and therein, lyes the Problem
Dolomite!
FOLLOW THE MONEY AND THE SOCIOPATHS PUSHING THE PLANDEMIC AGENDA
CHEW ON THIS
Steve has it all wrong…. It’s not fear of Vaccines it’s complete and total distrust of the Godless Bastards who btw if you haven’t figured will take advantage of this opportunity to advance their Global Agenda (UN 2030 or other like agendas) The elitists think there are too many of us useless mouth breathers so why not…. chew on this…. the vaccine for covid19 contains bio matter that when coupled with ‘the next virus’ will fulfill the Malthusian dream…. give Fauchi and Gates a truth serum and ask them about what they really believe…. omg… not another insane conspiracy nut….. wait and see.
This country has already tacitly relinquished the right to peaceably assemble themselves. That is gone. Don’t believe it? Organize a meeting of one hundred friends and associates on your property, with masks, sanitation stations, and gloves.
The risk of viral infection isn’t the issue. The issue is that they have given the edict that you shall not gather. That’s it. Health isn’t the issue. If it were there would be conversations about what masks do to the immediate and long term health of those wearing them. If health were the issue the migrant workers that have not learned our sanitary habits would have long since been pressured to learn sanitary practices in keeping with ours. If health were the issue the endless line of speakers (governors, selected “experts”, etc) would wear masks while addressing rooms full of journalists from all points on the globe.
No, this isn’t a matter of forcing something for the general good. This is an ideological wrestling match to pin citizens to the floor and demand that they get comfortable in the health and safety Half Nelson that they have us in right now.
“Lie there and take it, America. It’s for your own good.” Sounds like a bad line of dialogue in a political thriller.
Case in point, Bill et al: Gaurdasil (sp?), mandated vaccination in some states, with horrific side effects in some cases.
This whole virus thing is now bringing up the vaccination controversy issue. Good! About time it also sees the light of day…
I believe that Mr. Dershowitz is using scare tactics that states have this unlimited power and that we need the feds to get more power to stop this…. just sayin’
Hey Steve, I forgot you collect music and movies. A group of 8 of us here locally in Florida made a movie about 10 years ago, a full length motion picture. It is a WW2 Submarine movie. Took us about 3 years to do, scraping up money in between shootings. But, it was distributed, going straight to DVD.
If you would like a copy, just PM me a mailing address and I’ll drop it to you. You will definitely be the only one on your block with this one. 🙂
The first thing that you have to know about Dershowitz is that he voted for Hillary Clinton. He may be on the right side of the law at times and even helped defend Trump at his impeachment trial, but if you voted for Hillary you have a defect in your brain. The ability to ignore the obvious defects in her character and honesty is a disease.
Second, there is no need to vaccinate everyone. Those who choose not to vaccinate can’t infect those who got vaccinated, they can only infect others that refused to do it. Serves them right. That is why it works even if not all take the shots.
Yay, Bill!!!!!
We don’t need no stinking vaccines.
And next, I have a right to security in my person, papers and property. Just saying.
You better read the rest of the 4th amendment. There’s a pretty big but that follows..
Typhoid Mary, Mary Mallon was quarantined under sections 1169 and 1170 of the Greater New York Charter; she was arrested as a public health threat. There are so many regulations and obscure laws that all of us can be arrested and have any number of our rights taken away. So from the professor’s perspective he might be correct. When I was on active duty, I did not have the right to refuse vaccinations. The anthrax one was new at the time and there had been rumors of problems with it. I was close to separation from the service so I escaped that one. Mary Mallon was a confirmed public health threat. Will anybody with the possibility of infecting other people be deemed a confirmed health threat? Maybe during this media induced hysteria. I hope we don’t go that far.
If vaccinations were made mandatory, how would border crossings be handled? To be fair, you would need to mandate vaccination for anyone desiring to cross into a vaccinated state or country. I guess we would need some sort of universal proof of vaccination like maybe a tattoo . . . yah that would do it.
The government has been wrong about almost everything about the COVID-19 so why should we believe it when it comes to a reported vaccine? Especially since most of their sanctimonious pronouncements were said to have been based upon “the science” when there was no such science in existence. There is pathetically little actual science now. All we have is “the experts say”. Ironically, the experts were certified by the self same government who pretends we must submit to the unfounded whims of their own experts.
All it was, was fear, panic, and predictions of doom if we don’t stop living and hide under our beds for month after month after month. Its purpose was to teach us that the Constitution does not mean what it clearly says. We are supposed to submit to the whim of any petty tyrant simply because he or she is fearful and yells “EMEREGENCY” (undefined, undefinable, and unlimited in any way) at the top of their lungs.
It was intentional fraud from the get go. Especially in the so called blue states. Tyrants of all types came out of the woodwork and insisted on their way or else – forever and everywhere. The goal was to collapse the economy and cause us to fall into endless dependency. On what? The word of self same government that committed the abomination from the get go. Isn’t that “Special”? In the tone of the Saturday Night Live Church Lady.
Because you are afraid, you don’t have the right to insist that I stop living, working, and producing the values necessary for me to sustain my life. If you want to stop living, that is your choice. So stop living and get out of my way!
It is funny that we can find all sorts of rights in between the lines of the constitution, but not one that..I don’t know…secures us in our persons…and prevents the state from injecting pretty much whatever they want so long as a judge signs off on it.
What Alan, as a constitutional lawyer, forgets is that our unalienable rights aren’t derived from the constitution and that the State rules at the consent of the governed.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
Where is this quote from? Is this a first draft of the Declaration of Independence?
It’s from the second paragraph of the signed Declaration of Independence.
As for Prof. Dershowitz “forgetting” that our rights pre-exist the Constitution, law schools have been teaching for decades that that’s a nice, quaint notion but that without the Bill of Rights, there would be no realistic protection against their violation, so that in effect it is the Bill of Rights itself that confers those rights.
And then, textual originalism is dismissed on Day 1 of constitutional law class as likewise quaint and irrelevant. So I guess you can forget about the text of the Bill of Rights altogether. Thanks, Professor! I paid HOW much for this class?
Can I just say this: it is crystal clear that certain populations are significantly more likely to be hit hard by COVID19: the elderly, those in nursing homes, and those with other health challenges. So, why are whole states still locked down? And closing barber shops? Why not concentrate major efforts to those most vulnerable?? Like in Florida?
Unless a vaccine is developed that is greater than 95% effective (like for polio), I will make my own decision as to whether to take it. There is no vaccine for the “seasonal” flu – it is just a formulation that protects against the medical community’s best guess as to which variant of the flu will successfully spread through the global population.
Because of my travel when all of this broke, and because I have underlying health issues, I have remained in my house since Feb. 28th, save for essential trips for food and going to the post office for mail (and lots of dog walking). Further, I live in a very rural county, in which there has been 1 death in a population of 35,000 (that’s death rate of .000028). Nevertheless, I believe I contracted the virus because for about 2 weeks I had significant shortness of breath and extreme fatigue. No fever. Yesterday, I woke up and all the symptoms were gone. My town and county are totally ready to relax the restrictions, and get on with it.
I think the foundation of this argument is in the present political/cultural climate, people just don’t trust Government anymore to a degree never seen before…it has squandered almost all its legitimacy. I side with Bill here in that I think he sees the scales being only one grain of sand apart from tipping point. Ultimately, that’s why we have the Courts, but, for obvious reasons, they can’t be trusted anymore.
And, given the latest revelations about the Obama administration, why should anyone trust the “government?” Over the past 3 months we’ve been advised by “experts” (what would do without them?) to modify our behavior. Which we did, as a nation. It started out by washing hands and social distancing in order to bend the curve so as not to overwhelm medical facilities. It’s been bent, big-time in most of the country. Now, it’s become political, and I abhor both parties (but especially Pelosi) using this as an excuse to add massive debt for no reason. Certainly, funds are needed for Pooh Virus response, but not to bail out poorly-run states.
The “do it for the public good” argument doesn’t carry much weight with me: I’ve taken such a degree of crap over the past two months from people like Dershowitz and those who agree with them that I don’t feel any motivation to help them out. If wider society is going to treat anyone the way they have who who doesn’t fall in line with the groupthink, then as far as I’m concerned I’m in it for myself and that’s it. Whether getting a vaccine or wearing a mask helps anyone else no longer matters to me.
We’re deplorables until they need something from us?
Thats well and good, but as we see with COVID-19…there are plenty of lawmakers, governors with their state of emergencies, judges, and police officers ready to force you to…”under the law”
Yep, that’s the problem. I’m glad I live in a place where this nonsense is not actually required by law (Texas).
If someone gets this miracle vaccine and they are ‘immune ‘ why should they care if someone else decides to not get it?
Exactly. No one would be at risk of getting the disease other than those who are willing to take the risk by not getting vaccinated. So, how is that endangering the public?
I think the idea is that certain people, like Children for certain vaccines, are unable to get it for some reason or another so for other healthy people not to get it endangers them.
Don’t quote me on that.
One more quibble to add to Bill’s repetition of, “it’s a Republic.”
The Bill of Rights is solely an enumeration of a subset of our natural rights as individuals. They are Constitutionally-protected rights rather than just “Constitutional rights.”
In spite of Scott’s casual dismissal of “everyone knows what it [democracy] means,” language matters. We need to be precise, or we will fail to sufficiently-communicate to our offspring what we represent.
I thought we were an autonomous collective.
Keep it up, Bill.
We shall not submit to tyranny!
You single-handedly saved the “thumbs up” vote in spite of Steve’s poorly-conceived proposition of ostracizing individuals for refusing a vaccine.
So, Steven Green, you are fine with ostracizing individuals for refusing a vaccine? How do you propose that the so-called authorities enforce it?
Thank you for promoting the incarnation of yet another attribute of the fascist state. That is a VERY ill-conceived postion.
I suspect he’s thinking far more about schools and less about movie theaters or freely moving about in society.
Now, if there were more ability for people to school children at home and not be harassed by the government after making their choices about both schooling and vaccines we’d be getting someplace. Since most most vaccines are administered once and you’d join a group that requires proof of likely once as well it wouldn’t be that burdensome, and it would be part of the freely associating rights that people exercise among themselves. Of course we’d probably have to strike down a lot of the employment and sales laws to truly associate freely and just let social media shake it all out. Since the anti-vaxxers tend to self-out at least that part is easy.
Scott, Dershowitz’a age excuses nothing. Rights are rights regardless of age. Based on his record, it’s certain that he knows better.