It’s just a reflex at this point. Any time Obama states an opinion they have to compete with each other to see who disagrees the loudest.
Obama: Please protect your children against potentially deadly or debilitating diseases.
GOP: You’re not the boss of me!
Obama: It’s a beautiful day today.
GOP: IT’S RAINING BLOOD!!
I pray that Obama concludes his next major speech with the line “And remember folks, it is essential that you continue to breathe.“
Worth also noting that after Christie had said what he did, he knew that taking questions about it would not be a good idea, and cancelled three press conferences on his UK tour.
And as an aside, this is a really awful way of wording a pro-choice statement:
“When I talk to folks in my party, being pro-life, I say it’s easy to be pro-life when they’re in the womb, they haven’t done anything wrong yet, you know, they haven’t made any bad judgements,” he said.
“Tell me that you’re pro-life with a kid who’s lying on the floor of a jail cell basement, addicted to drugs.”
Ideologue believes the principle is the most important thing. He will take failure with pride if he demonstrates faith to his notions.
Has Rand Paul said nice things about JS Mill, specifically?
Is engineering a successful short-sell frowned-upon?
Maybe I should go with my backup-plan of a spam-supported pump-n-dump operation.
#E-bo-la!
This could work out… not only could the state seize children, other parents could sue. I have a feeling this is “A Modest Proposal” type situation…I hope.
Ebola-ghazi?
Sadly, it’s a pro-life statement - but at least it’s more consistent than usual, saying that if you’re pro-life then you should take more interest in supporting it beyond birth.
Of course, that stance is a bit inconsistent with the stance that only parents can choose whether their children get a vaccination against life-threatening diseases. Clearly, in politics you have to make sure the inconsistencies are preserved somewhere, just like energy in thermodynamics.
Let’s not allow taking cheap shots at Rand Paul to obscure the facts:
How many rights do we have to give up before we realize freedom is better policy than state control?
The anti-vaxxers aren’t.
Nobody is denying that some people are immunosuppressed and can’t be vaccinated. It’s precisely because of them that everyone who can be, should be.
You are perfectly free to avoid vaccinations, as long as you don’t interact in the public space.
I think that’s pretty fair.
Special consideration given for the wearing of a licensed, regularly-inspected state-approved HamsterBall.
“Waaaah! There’s no wheelchair ramp on the Ayn Rand Temple!”
I think plenty of people are down with more freedom on this board. However, Rand Paul is masquerading as a libertarian, but is really a corporatist - a corporatist state is no better than a strong state, IMO. Worse, in the fact that if everything is privatized, the people who already own the most financial resources are going to snatch everything up, and not leave much for the rest of us.
I think his use of “ownership” to describe a relationship between parents and child is quite telling. It shows he puts the rights of property owners above the rights of individuals.
Given the recent flare-ups of diseases tied to children who were not vaccinated, it’s clear that this is not always true. Especially in situations involving long-term but difficult-to-judge risks that impact both the children and other people around them.
Would you drive if there were no speed limit, no enforcement of traffic laws, and no requirements for safety features of any kinds in cars? I don’t think I’d even want to walk on the sidewalks around here…
At a certain point it becomes morally irresponsible not to take a stand. “Hey, I’m not advocating for rape and murder. I’m just saying it’s not the government’s place to prevent rape and murder.”
Child welfare laws weren’t written for the majority of parents. Most parents would feed their children every day and make sure their kids get some kind of education and follow medically accepted guidelines for basic disease prevention with or without government intervention.
But there’s always going to be some parents who don’t feed their children or who prostitute them for cash or who allow them to die horrible deaths through medical negligence. It’s for those parents that we’ve set limits to parental discretion.
It should be up to the individual States to decide where they stand on rape and murder.
Careful with that “long term” there… in the long term, humanity may drive itself extinct due to the success of modern medicine. We could easily end up with Easter Island on a planetary scale… if we are going to defeat old age and disease, and refuse to mandate birth control, what will we do when we run out of dirt, oil, water and oxygen?
The usual answer is either “god will save us” or “technology will give us pie in the sky by and by” because nobody wants to really face the difficult questions. It’s easier to just snark at Rand Paul and sneer at anti-vaxxers than to admit one’s own ignorance and shortsightedness.
Disease is still a part of the population equilibrium of the human race. Before assuming that universal immunity to disease would decrease suffering, one might want to think deeply.
As a responsible parent, I have taken pains to ensure that my child is fully vaccinated so he’s not a danger to any kids in his class who can’t get vaccinated. I’m not an immunologist, but I understand the basic concept behind how herd immunity works. The more selfish bastards there are out there foisting their extremely flawed and completely juvenile understanding of “freedom” onto their kids, the less protected all of us are.
