Is drunk driving NOT a crime unless the driver causes injury? Is tax evasion NOT a crime unless prosecutor proves the government would have spent the money “usefully”? Is attempted murder NOT a crime unless it succeeds?
The semantic question of whether such a peculiar libertarian perspective fits in the scope of “political position” is not likely to be fruitful.
Absolutely.
But drunk driving isn’t a federal crime.
Tax evasion is, but there your connection fails: the government is under no particular obligation to spend your money usefully.
To be clear, would you support legislation to mandate vaccination?
It’s tiring when right-wingers finesse questions with “Oh no! Useful electoral reform would violate the First Amendment written by the Finger of God atop Mount Sinai.” Or, “Oh no; that’s prohibited by Jacobson vs Somebody-or-Other.”
Law is made to serve man, not vice versa.
Don’t most states have mandatory vaccinnation laws for enrollment in public schools? And don’t most of those have exemptions for religious beliefs? Isn’t that a major problem with mandatory vaccinations?
“Thirteen outbreaks of measles were identified during 1985–1994 in religious groups opposing vaccination. These outbreaks resulted in more than 1200 cases and 9 deaths. Outbreaks of polio (in the 1970s), pertussis, and rubella have been documented among Amish groups.37 Salmon et al.38 found that persons with religious or philosophic exemptions were 35 times more likely to contract measles than were vaccinated persons during 1985–1992. They also found that persons living in communities with high concentrations of exemptors were them"selves at increased risk for measles because of increased risk for exposure.”
I think a major problem with your thoughts on mandated vaccinations is your very own thoughts for RFRA and the Free Exercise Clause. While it is entirely possible that mandatory vaccinations would meet the strict scrutiny test and be constitutional, I do doubt the right’s willingness to tread on “sincerely held religious beliefs” regarding vaccinations.
Yes. And yes.
And sorta.
No. Because the RFRA is not applicable against the states, and it’s state law in which we find the vaccination requirements. There’s no state statutory requirement for a vaccination law to meet strict scrutiny.
That said: in my view, such laws would meet strict scrutiny anyway.
FTR, I’m not advocating against free speech. I’m arguing against interpretations, buy a court packed with right-wingers, that election campaigns are to be paid for and orchestrated by[sic] the biggest corporate interests: “Ca’t stop it. !st Commendment. It’s the Will of Allah.”
(ETA:
Freudian typo left intact.)
Some interesting ideas. It’s hard to know where to draw the line. I hope every outbreak will be the one that wakes people up so that we won’t have to draw one, but alas! not yet.
I’ve been keeping a close eye on the mumps outbreak that’s occurring in my backyard(Columbus, Ohio). Of the 260 confirmed cases 160 are from the Ohio State University. Ohio requires the MMR vaccine for kids to go to public school but allows exemptions for philosophical reasons of course. I think I’ll check my kids’ records when I get home to see if either of them has gotten the second MMR dose yet. I know one is too young . . .
Yes.
This doesn’t erase the need to work within the law. All law can be changed. If the Constitution forbids a necessary law, amend the Constitution. We’ve done it nearly thirty times in our nation’s history. We tried to pass an income tax law – but the Constitution’s plain text forbid it, and the courts correctly struck it down.
So we added the Sixteenth Amendment. We notably did NOT simply say, “Hey, we’re doing this anyway, because we need this revenue model for government and law is made to serve man, not vice versa.”
In this case, I would not support federal vaccination law. But states, unlike the federal government, have plenary police power. There is no list of the inherent limits of their power. The federal government’s powers are limited to what is granted by the Constitution.
Rarely, as here, I agree with Bricker. The state’-rights model is a good one. Progressive states can (and have) imposed vaccination requirements.
… Does the question then become: Why don’t thoughtful residents of backward “red”-thinking states just “vote” with their feet?
sigh I forgot who I was dealing with…
19 states have enacted their own RFRA’s. I also included the Free Exercise Clause, unless you are of the opinion that that does not apply to states either.
And do you believe conservatives have the political wherewithal to call for mandatory vaccinations over religious objections? Personally, I can’t see that happening whatsoever, which will remain a huge problem with mandatory vaccinations.
The etymological roots of ‘Brickroll’ stem from the more familiar ‘Rickroll’, though in practice it is more Socratic in nature and far less obnoxious.
In simplest terms, a Brickroll is a rhetorical technique of posting a hypothetical that elicits an strong response and garners general agreement, typically by the more liberal wing of the SDMB. Once that generalized view has been established, it is revealed that the OP is actually tightly analogous to a different, ostensibly unrelated context (typically conservative), and thereby either exposes the hypocrisy of the initial posters or forces them into more critical thought in distinguishing the two.
Not every Bricker OP is a Brickroll, and not every Brickroll is posted by Bricker, so searching for an example is beyond my time limits. Given that it’s happened with some frequency and others have noticed the tendency as well (also unserachable by me), I hope you recognize the practice without needing specifics, and understand the aside as anticipation of the potential that there was a second level of debate under the surface (e.g. how pro/anti-states rights is not a black and white issue).
Also, To Serve Man is a Twilight Zone episode that I’m going to allude to, but not spoil.
Lawsuits don’t seem like a particularly effective method here. As someone already said, there’s already a strong negative consequence to getting measles (you get measles). I’m not sure the vague threat of a lawsuit in the off chance that you both get sick and can be proven to have passed it on to someone in a way that makes you liable really adds much on top of that by way of an incentive. Especially as there are a lot of people that don’t have much in the way of extra savings or earnings to go after in such a suit.
Plus the current regieme of mandating vaccination for school attendence actually works pretty well. Vaccination rates are high and despite the common perception, haven’t really changed in recent years. To the extent that there are still people that need to be vaccinated, I think simply tightening this requirement by making religious exemptions more difficult to get would be adequate.
Also note the high number of “no records available”. This to me suggests that a non-trivial chunk of the non-vaccinated aren’t making a philosophical choice, they’ve just fallen through the cracks of the medical system (immigrants, people with crappy doctors who don’t push immunization, people whose school failed to adequately check their records, etc).
My guess is improving programs to reach those people would do a lot more to improve immunization rates then messing around with after-the-fact lawsuits.
Also note most outbreaks can be linked to people bring the disease over from overseas. Requiring immunization as a precondition to getting a passport might be another effective measure.
Combine these 2 (maybe include a “no school vouchers” clause), and I think you might have a good system to encourage immunization, while not letting people claim “You’re taking away my right to freedom of religion”. Sure, you can make the choice to not immunize yourself or your kids, but we’re not going to let you endanger others by doing so.
Got it.
I think this is fairly straightforward, though – Hamlet did point out the RFRA analogy, but that’s not really applicable as the RFRA does not apply to the states.
And it’s a cookbook. I think fifty years is safe.
OK, fair enough – in that case, I’ll point out that the issue should easily be able to survive strict scrutiny.
Probably not. This would be an area in which I would differ sharply with the weight of conservative practice, though. I do think it should be state, not federal, but I say that if states have the ability to quarantine, they should have the ability to vaccinate, and the quarantine laws are of long-standing nature.
I want to slightly take issue with this, Bricker, my friend. While reason by analogy is always a dodgy proposition, we have a long history of people willing to risk huge financial loss rather than comply with laws they find inconvenient or expensive. Car insurance, for example, is a place where a great many people will go without despite the potential for huge losses, even when they can afford to pay for it.
In short, there will always be a cohort that will disobey such compulsions even when it makes financial sense for them to do so.
Quite a bit snipped.
While no one seems to take offense, and without getting too heavy-handed, this sidebar is really something I’d prefer not occur in Great Debates. It adds nothing to the discussion and redirects it towards a particular poster.
No warning issued, of course. But please refrain in the future.
Except it doesn’t make financial sense to pay for insurance – until it does. Humans are traditionally bad at long-term thinking.
Indeed. Risk assessment is one of the things we do worst in all the world. But assessing risk of measles contraction is simply another form of something we’re bad at. It just gets lost in all the ‘anti-vaxxer’ nonsense.
My issue with Bricker’s proposition is that I don’t think people will respond properly to anything other than compulsory vaccinations with immediate consequence. How to acheive that I leave for those with more interest.