Where there is a risk there must be a choice? Sorry but no. No. NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! I am so frustrated by all the well-meaning activists and their signs emblazoned with that message. What I do with my body has nothing to do with the degree of risk involved. What I do with my body is strictly my choice, period. This is not negotiable. I am a sovereign human being with natural rights no person or government may infringe.
Love this well stated truth: “It is never right to harm one individual in service to the greater good and violating one individual’s fundamental right to bodily autonomy cannot be construed as anything other than harm.”
Thank you for the write up. It’s so important to think through the phrases that we bandy around, thinking we are helping a righteous cause. We may in fact be hurting the cause!
Happy to have been referred here by Margaret Anna Alice. Well said. I've been repeating Malone's line about risk when trying to reason with people from the pro-mandate crowd, but only because I assumed my true feelings on the matter - which you've articulated perfectly here - would be considered "extreme" amidst today's fear-saturated, quasi-socialist narrative. But I admit I've lately lost my taste for appeasement and am now more inclined to be unapologetically absolutist in my opinions, so it's nice to hear from someone similarly-minded.
The notion of sacrificing the individual for the good of society has been repeatedly debunked, yet collectivists continue to trot it out, usually as a tool of social control (see Academy of Ideas' treatment here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvPKTVK10JE, or read Ursula K. LeGuin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" for the absurd and tragic implications of such a value system even in a clearly fictional best-case scenario where such magical thinking is accurate).
Or consider the philosophy of utilitarianism, where the most moral action is the one that achieves the most benefit for the greatest number of people. The logical conclusion of which is that it would be moral to kill one healthy person in order to harvest their organs and save a dozen sick people. I mean there is a place for intellectual debate about these arguments, but this perspective undoubtedly flies in the face of the moral philosophy of individual rights upon which the US was founded (and which many other "liberal" democracies have since come to espouse).
The problem of "who decides what is safe" is an obvious one, though I continue to hear people worship at the altar of Science as if it were monolithic and infallible, or at least that the latest "consensus" (as if there ever was such a thing in science) is always superior to any preceding assumptions (like when they invented baby formula and instantly everyone knew it must be superior to that breastmilk that had been nourishing babies for millions of years).
But as I've pointed out to my "But-it's-a public-health-issue" family members, we don't enforce dietary requirements and have only a few, more or less arbitrary restrictions on certain foods and drugs, nor do we mandate exercise, and we don't put limitations on how much people can drive, even though all these things have clear impacts on public health. To which I have been treated to many variations of "LA LA LA I can't hear you! Safe and effective!"
Here's another one that occurred to me while reading your excellent essay: what about a rapist who has tested negative for every known STD and has had a vasectomy. We have now removed all "risk" from his rapey rampages. Are his victims no longer entitled to a choice? Why is bodily integrity a factor here, but not when the tool of penetration is a syringe? What if he had been biologically modified to carry a Covid treatment, like monoclonal antibodies, but one that could be effectively passed through bodily fluids. Would it be ok then? What if instead of raping people through assault, we threatened to take away people's jobs or kick them out of school unless they came to a medical facility and submitted to sex with him "voluntarily." How much mental gymnastics do we have to do to make the "public health benefits" outweigh the bodily autonomy issue?
A-freaking-MEN, Leslie! YES, YES, YES to NO, NO, NO!!
Thank you for pinpointing the crux of the problem with that statement. Who, after all, is determining risk? The State says the injections are “safe and effective, safe and effective, safe and effective!” So that statement does nothing to defend us against the forced injection of an experimental product they claim has no risks.
There is no such thing as “community”. While it can, at times, be a useful theoretical construct, no one can interact with a “community”. All action occurs on the person to person level. There is no other.
Love this well stated truth: “It is never right to harm one individual in service to the greater good and violating one individual’s fundamental right to bodily autonomy cannot be construed as anything other than harm.”
Thank you for the write up. It’s so important to think through the phrases that we bandy around, thinking we are helping a righteous cause. We may in fact be hurting the cause!
Happy to have been referred here by Margaret Anna Alice. Well said. I've been repeating Malone's line about risk when trying to reason with people from the pro-mandate crowd, but only because I assumed my true feelings on the matter - which you've articulated perfectly here - would be considered "extreme" amidst today's fear-saturated, quasi-socialist narrative. But I admit I've lately lost my taste for appeasement and am now more inclined to be unapologetically absolutist in my opinions, so it's nice to hear from someone similarly-minded.
The notion of sacrificing the individual for the good of society has been repeatedly debunked, yet collectivists continue to trot it out, usually as a tool of social control (see Academy of Ideas' treatment here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvPKTVK10JE, or read Ursula K. LeGuin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas" for the absurd and tragic implications of such a value system even in a clearly fictional best-case scenario where such magical thinking is accurate).
Or consider the philosophy of utilitarianism, where the most moral action is the one that achieves the most benefit for the greatest number of people. The logical conclusion of which is that it would be moral to kill one healthy person in order to harvest their organs and save a dozen sick people. I mean there is a place for intellectual debate about these arguments, but this perspective undoubtedly flies in the face of the moral philosophy of individual rights upon which the US was founded (and which many other "liberal" democracies have since come to espouse).
The problem of "who decides what is safe" is an obvious one, though I continue to hear people worship at the altar of Science as if it were monolithic and infallible, or at least that the latest "consensus" (as if there ever was such a thing in science) is always superior to any preceding assumptions (like when they invented baby formula and instantly everyone knew it must be superior to that breastmilk that had been nourishing babies for millions of years).
But as I've pointed out to my "But-it's-a public-health-issue" family members, we don't enforce dietary requirements and have only a few, more or less arbitrary restrictions on certain foods and drugs, nor do we mandate exercise, and we don't put limitations on how much people can drive, even though all these things have clear impacts on public health. To which I have been treated to many variations of "LA LA LA I can't hear you! Safe and effective!"
Here's another one that occurred to me while reading your excellent essay: what about a rapist who has tested negative for every known STD and has had a vasectomy. We have now removed all "risk" from his rapey rampages. Are his victims no longer entitled to a choice? Why is bodily integrity a factor here, but not when the tool of penetration is a syringe? What if he had been biologically modified to carry a Covid treatment, like monoclonal antibodies, but one that could be effectively passed through bodily fluids. Would it be ok then? What if instead of raping people through assault, we threatened to take away people's jobs or kick them out of school unless they came to a medical facility and submitted to sex with him "voluntarily." How much mental gymnastics do we have to do to make the "public health benefits" outweigh the bodily autonomy issue?
Well said Leslie,
Truths straight from the heart.
Thank you!!
A-freaking-MEN, Leslie! YES, YES, YES to NO, NO, NO!!
Thank you for pinpointing the crux of the problem with that statement. Who, after all, is determining risk? The State says the injections are “safe and effective, safe and effective, safe and effective!” So that statement does nothing to defend us against the forced injection of an experimental product they claim has no risks.
There is no such thing as “community”. While it can, at times, be a useful theoretical construct, no one can interact with a “community”. All action occurs on the person to person level. There is no other.
Yes! Couldn’t agree more! The first line of the Nuremberg Code alone should be more than enough!
1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.
Thanks for making this explicit.
If the big goons wanted to force me to eat healthy and do exercise I'd tell them to stuff it.
My body, my choice. If I want to destroy my body, well that's on me.