Any assertions that free speech should be curtailed and information suppressed because many people are biased, ill-informed, and/or stupid, is an assertion that free speech as a principle is a threat to society rather than a fundamental human right. Like the saying goes, “Governments love free speech when ‘free’ is defined as ‘responsible’ and ‘responsible’ is defined by the government.” Or these days, major corporations that have bought into the Leftist agenda wholesale and so set out to suppress the speech of those that disagree with them even though they are masquerading as platforms rather than publishers. There’s actually a case dealing with that currently on the Supreme Court’s docket, hopefully they’ll take it up.
annatar1914 wrote:I see lots of conservatives and libertarian types online who are anti-vaxxers in a universal sense as it is. Plus you have the concerns of Christians about how some of these medicines might be made.
Are there going to be hardcore Libertarians opposed to
mandatory vaccinations? Sure. Are there going to be those that refuse these vaccinations as they do all others due to religious beliefs? Sure (and they should be allowed to do so on Free Exercise grounds, unless the government can show that we can’t reach herd immunity without them). But I haven’t seen any indication that these are anything but a tiny fringe. Meanwhile, the latest Gallup poll has 34% of the US declaring themselves to be Conservatives (which many of these varieties of anti-vaxxers wouldn’t) while Liberals came in at 26%. I would say that as a percentage of the plurality ideology, the numbers opposed to the vaccine can’t be described as “lots”—more like tiny.
Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.
—Edmund Burke