The Mandate
On September 9th President Joe Biden announced his intention to use OSHA rules to force all employers with more than 100 workers to fully vaccinate their employees for Covid or at least test them weekly for Covid. Federal employees, federal contractors, and medical facilities receiving Medicaid and Medicare funding would be required to fully vaccinate their employees. This mandate would affect 100 million Americans with an unprecedented level of coercion to receive a medical procedure. Such choices shouldn’t be mandated by government, but should be decisions that every individual (or their guardian) makes for themselves. Vaccine mandates should be nullified, returning the decision-making to its rightful place.
Pure Tyranny
This is an extreme tyrannical overstep for the executive branch to take. It would be just as unconstitutional for the legislative branch to pass a law to this effect, but making such a change via executive order is an even more obvious statement that the establishment powers-that-be in Washington DC simply do not care about the US Constitution’s limits to their power. The Tenth Amendment clearly states that non-delegated powers belong to the states or the people. Here’s it is in its entirety:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-10/
It’s very clear that the US Constitution delegates specific powers to the federal government, but nowhere in that document is any power given related to medicine, medical treatments, or anything that citizens put into their bodies. Coercing individuals to accept any sort of injection is not only morally and philosophically wrong, it is clearly unconstitutional.
There are scores of arguments and concerns about whether the vaccines (perhaps more accurately: gene therapy injections) are effective or safe, but it’s not the party’s role to get bogged down in the “science” that has become so polarized and politically-motivated that nobody knows what to believe. Sorting out the truth and exercising critical thought is up to the individual. Instead, we are here to inform from the Libertarian perspective, boiling this down to the most basic philosophy of bodily autonomy.
The analysis is really very simple. Do you have the right to force your neighbor to take an injection or medical treatment of any sort? The obvious answer is NO. All government power derives from the people. Governments are formed by people who delegate specific powers to it. People cannot delegate powers which they do not possess. The government simply cannot force anybody to partake in injections or any medical treatment whatsoever.
Improper Escalation
With the ongoing efforts for a $3.5T Build Back Better and Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal in the works (currently stalled in Congress), Biden’s original push for OSHA rules and fines of $14,000 per violation are already being escalated to fine businesses in the $70,000 to $700,000 range for refusing to follow the mandates. Current gridlock isn’t guaranteed to stop this or other proposals from going through and becoming passed as a supposed “law.”
Many don’t understand it, but the often-abused Supremacy Clause from Article VI of the US Constitution does not make all laws passed by Congress and signed by the President the “supreme law of the land.” Read this carefully:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land…
https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/
Notice the inconvenient phrase “which shall be made in Pursuance thereof.” This means that only laws which follow the US Constitution would overrule laws at the state or local level. Please also note that executive orders don’t qualify as “supreme law,” either, as they aren’t even laws to begin with. From there we invoke the 10th Amendment and the concept of nullification as the answer to preserving liberty. As stated in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 written by Thomas Jefferson (in response to the Alien and Sedition Acts):
…where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy…
https://thefederalistpapers.org/founders/jefferson/the-kentucky-resolutions-of-1798
Nullification
A number or states have stated their intention to resist Biden’s vaccination mandates, but unfortunately Ohio is not yet on that list. We need to rekindle the classic American spirit of resistance here in our county in order to resist at multiple levels:
- At the personal level, we should simply be unwilling to comply. Even those who have received the injections should choose not to share the data with their employer. It’s simply none of their business. Some of us may be forced to change jobs or go into business for ourselves.
- At the local and county level we should ban any enforcement of such mandates, while backing officials’ actions who stand against them.
- At the Ohio state level we need to demand legislation imposing fines and imprisonment for anybody who attempts to enforce these horrible mandates. The simple fact is that federal agencies simply do not have the resources to enforce such mandates without the state’s assistance. Also, be sure to let your representatives know that this will be a hot-button issue in next year’s primaries and elections!
More will be coming on this issue and I’m aware that some model legislation is in the works via the Tenth Amendment Center and other sources. Please engage with politicans at the local and state levels to make your voice heard!
