Mr. “individual liberties”, Rand Paul, is probably as nutty as his dear old Dad after all. In an interview with CNBC yesterday, Paul stated that vaccinations “should be voluntary”. He also claimed:
“I have heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.”
That’s true, they’re what we now know as Conservatives; sad, but hardly deadly. And most likely not as a result of vaccines.
What I’m talking about here, is the relatively recent idea that individual liberty means you have no responsibility to your fellow citizens; hardly what the founders envisioned when they created this nation. As Thomas Jefferson put it:
Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.
This is the understanding of liberty absent from the minds of some Americans, especially on the far right, who fancy themselves true “patriots” because they don lapel pins and dress in red white and blue. The sentiment has become, most notably since the Tea Party began its assault on democracy, that personal liberty should always trump the common good.
We cannot have sensible gun laws because some gun owners place their rights above that of society, including their own children, who far too often accidentally kill each other with unsecured weapons.
Health workers traveling to other countries worry more about their “civil rights” than the possibility of spreading ebola, and fight government efforts to err on the side of caution. Quarantine durations are based on scientific calculations, but for some, 21 days of quarantine is evidentally too much to ask.
Now, having virtually eradicated common childhood diseases, we risk their spread again due to the selfish (and erroneous) beliefs of “anti-vaxxers”.
While uninformed, obstinate people are one thing; you doesn’t expect someone running for President to make unchecked statements like those of Rand Paul. I sure as hell don’t want a fool like him in charge of the CDC, do you?