Recently in the news is the vaccination controversy. Arizona representative Kelly Townsend made the following comments on facebook:
"Our country is sovereign, our State is sovereign, our family is sovereign, our God is sovereign and the most holy and sacred last frontier of sovereignty is our own body.Dearest friends and people of Arizona, it seems we are prepared to give up our liberty, the very sovereignty of our body, because of measles. I read yesterday that the idea is being floated that if not enough people get vaccinated, then we are going to force them to. The idea that we force someone to give up their liberty for the sake of the collective is not based on American values but rather, Communist.I have sworn an oath to the Constitution five times, now, and I take that oath very seriously. It was not just something I repeated in order to get sworn in to an office. I do not make my decisions based on my next election or what the populace demands if it violates that oath.
Folks, I am going to ask you to educate your children, educate your family, educate those around you about the fundamentals of liberty and what that means. It seems we have lost those fundamentals along the way and are chasing our fears.
And finally, I am going to demand, as a mother of an injured child from her vaccines, that we insist that we spend the time and money on discovering what in these vaccines is causing so much injury, instead of insisting on taking your liberty in the name of the collective.
Benjamin Franklin once said, 'Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.'
Live free or die,
Rep. Kelly Townsend"
In her comments was the phrase "our own body." I take this to mean that Rep. Townsend believes that human beings own their own bodies or as the Levellers and John Locke would have it, are "self-owners." This concept of self-ownership is indeed contrary to Marxist philosophy which conceives of human beings not as individual self-owners, but members of various classes who have collective interests instead of rights. The very idea of justice, not to mention self-ownership, is deprecated by Marxism as a bourgeois (therefore minoritarian) concept invented by one class to oppress another.
So if Rep. Townsend meant that forced vaccination is compatible with a communist society and that self-ownership is (or used to be) a feature of the American political system, then I think she was right.
The MSM did not dare to attack the idea of self-ownership head-on, but focused on Townsend's use of the word "communist," which they seemed to think people would find ridiculous. I don't think it was ridiculous; it was in the ball park.
Furthermore, Townsend's attackers resorted to a strawman technique---casting the argument in terms of whether or not vaccination has been proven to be effective or whether it's harmful. That is not the point. The point is whether or not a government has the right to force its citizens to be vaccinated.
But then do I suggest that there is no remedy if someone transmits a disease to another person? Is there no remedy or legal protection against disease-carriers? Does the traditional law suggest anything?
In criminal law, a criminal is supposed usually to have
mens rea---the intent to commit a crime. Since most people never intend to infect others with diseases, it doesn't seem to qualify as a crime.
In tort law, however, the question of whether a tortfeasor (someone who inflicts harm on the injured party) intends to commit a tort is irrelevant. All that is legally required for an injured party to prove his case is the evidence that harm was inflicted by the tortfeasor. So it seems that there might be a legal basis for action against a person who infects another person with a disease.
(The alleged tortfeasor could have a defense by claiming that the infection was unknowing, and it should therefore be considered to have been an "Act of Nature [God]." Traditionally, one is not responsible for Acts of Nature [God], even if one's property was the direct vehicle by which the Act of Nature harmed another person.)
The idea of forced vaccination ultimately justifies itself on a utilitarian basis. Its proponents claim that more lives are saved than lost by vaccination. This may be a reasonable claim, but there is no way to know for sure. Furthermore, the claim that more lives are saved than lost implies a value judgement: the greater number of lives saved by the vaccine were worth more than the fewer number killed by it. This calculation assumes that all human lives are of equal value. But what if we're not willing to accept this assumption?
As self-owners, surely we should have the right to weigh the pros and cons ourselves and take responsibility for the consequences of our choices.
And that is precisely what a forced vaccination law doesn't allow one to do. Instead, the decision of whether one is to be vaccinated is made by government officials. In that case, if the vaccination kills someone or makes them sick, as
it does in rare cases, shouldn't the person or persons who made the decision to vaccinate be liable?
Finally, what if it could be known
ex ante that there would be no bad effects at all from vaccination? Would a government then be justified in forced vaccination? According to a theory of justice based on self-ownership, a person is only justified in using force on another person in defense or in retribution. It is possible that an infected person doesn't actually transmit a disease. Since we are not able to know the future, we cannot know whether or not an infected person will infect another person. No infection, no tort, and therefore no justification for the use of coercion in forced vaccination.
