Christian Nationalism Versus The Constitution

Yesterday, I spoke at a gathering in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, sponsored by multiple civic organizations convened by Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Other speakers addressed the growing threat of this unAmerican movement and the multiple ways it is not Christian. I addressed the threat it poses to America’s constitution. My remarks are below.

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I’ve been asked to discuss the multiple ways in which Christian Nationalism is inconsistent with America’s founding documents—especially the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights. It’s always a good idea to define our terms, so let me begin by listing the basic premises of Christian Nationalism—a political movement that my friends in the Christian clergy assure me is anything but authentically Christian.

Christian Nationalists begin with the ahistorical insistence that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and that one must be a Christian (or– let’s be honest here—a White Christian) in order to be a “true American.” Christian Nationalists reject Church-State separation and believe that civil government should impose their version of “Christian” behavior on all American citizens. That would entail—at a minimum—banning abortion, rejecting same-sex marriage (and for that matter, criminalizing homosexuality), and reinstating patriarchy.

Virtually every tenet of Christian Nationalism is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. I won’t spend time today explaining how the movement distorts and mischaracterizes either Christianity or the actual history of this country. What I will do is “compare and contrast” some of the foundational provisions of America’s constituent documents—and especially the Bill of Rights— documents that reflect what I call “The American Idea”–with the absolutely contrary premises of Christian Nationalism.

What do I mean when I talk about the “American Idea”? What is that Idea, and what were its political and philosophical roots? Where did our Constitutional system come from, and how did it differ from prior beliefs about the nature of government power and authority? Answering those questions does require a visit to the history of America.

A while back, while I was doing research for one of my books, I came across an illuminating explanation of the stark differences between the original settlers who came to this country—those the scholar called the “Planting Fathers”—and the men who would draft our legal system—the men we call the Founding Fathers. As he pointed out, the Puritans and Pilgrims who first came to America had defined liberty—including religious liberty– as “freedom to do the right thing”—freedom to worship and obey the right God in the true church, and to use the power of government to ensure that their neighbors did too. But the Founders who crafted our constitution some 150 years later were products of the intervening Enlightenment and they had accepted its dramatically different definition of liberty.

Enlightenment philosophers defined liberty as personal autonomy—an individual’s right to make his or her own moral and political decisions, free of government coercion. In the Enlightenment’s libertarian construction, liberty meant freedom to “do your own thing,” subject to two very important caveats: you could do your own thing so long as you did not thereby harm the person or property of someone else, and so long as you recognized the equal right of others to do their “own thing.”  The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights are firmly grounded in that Enlightenment understanding of the nature of liberty.

It’s also important to understand that, as a result, America’s constitutional system is largely based on a concept we call “negative liberty.” The Founders believed that our individual rights don’t come from some gracious grants from government; rather, those rights are “natural,” meaning that we are entitled to certain basic rights simply by virtue of being human (thus the term “human rights”), and that a legitimate government is obliged to respect and protect those natural rights.  If you think about it, the Bill of Rights is essentially a list of things that government—“the state”—is forbidden to do. For example, the state cannot prescribe our religious or political beliefs, it cannot search us without probable cause, it cannot censor our expression—and it is forbidden from doing such things even when popular majorities might favor such actions. That concept of a limited and constrained government is absolutely antithetical to Christian Nationalism, which seeks to use the power of the state to compel behaviors consistent with their version of Christianity.

Robert P. Jones, chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute, is among the many scholars who have described why that Christian Nationalist approach is inconsistent with the American system, writing that –and I quote–“A worldview that claims God as a political partisan and dehumanizes one’s political opponents as evil is fundamentally antidemocratic, and a mind-set that believes that our nation was divinely ordained to be a promised land for Christians of European descent is incompatible with the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion and equality of all.”

The Founders’ view of freedom of religion is incorporated in the First Amendment, which protects religious liberty through the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses – clauses that, operating together, require the separation of Church and State.

Now, as fundamentalists like to point out, the actual phrase “separation of church and state” doesn’t appear in the text of the First Amendment. What they prefer to ignore is that that the phrase refers to the way the First Amendment’s two religion clauses operate. However, the concept of church-state separation had long preceded its incorporation into the First Amendment. The first documented use of the actual phrase was by Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, well before the Revolutionary War. The most famous use, of course, was that of Thomas Jefferson. When Jefferson was President, a group of Danbury Baptists wrote to him asking for an official interpretation of the First Amendment’s religion clauses. Jefferson’s response was that the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause were intended to “erect a wall of separation” between government and religion. What is less often noted is that since Jefferson’s response was official, it was duly confirmed by the then serving U.S. Attorney General before it was transmitted to the Danbury Baptists.

Historians tell us that the Establishment Clause went through more than 20 drafts, with the Founders rejecting formulations like “there shall be no National Church” as inadequate to their intent. The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.” The courts have uniformly held that this language not only forbids the government from establishing an official religion or state Church but also prohibits government actions that endorse or sponsor religion, favor one religion over another, or that prefer religion to non-religion, or for that matter, non-religion over religion.

Meanwhile, the Free Exercise Clause prohibits government from interfering with the “free exercise” of religion. It protects the right of Americans to choose our own beliefs, and to express those beliefs without fear of state disapproval. Read together, the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause require government neutrality in matters of religion. The Religion Clauses prohibit Government from either benefiting or burdening religious belief.

One way to think about the operation of the religion clauses is that the Establishment Clause forbids the public sector (that is, government) from either favoring or disfavoring religion, and the Free Exercise Clause forbids government from interfering with the expression of religious beliefs in the public square (that is, the myriad non-governmental venues where citizens exchange ideas and opinions.)

When states misuse their authority and play favorites, when they privilege some religious beliefs over others, people who do not share those privileged beliefs are relegated to the status of second-class citizens. Separation of church and state prevents adherents of majority religions from using government to force their beliefs or practices on others, and it keeps agencies of government from interfering with the internal operations of churches, synagogues and mosques.

As to that original purpose of neutrality, I’ve come across few explanations better than the one offered by John Leland. Leland, who lived from 1754 to1851, was an evangelical Baptist preacher who had strong views on the individual’s relationship to God, the inviolability of the individual conscience, and the limited nature of human knowledge. He wrote, “religion is a matter between God and individuals; religious opinions of men not being the objects of civil government, nor in any way under its control…Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics.”

(Leland could hardly have envisioned our current government’s belief that it does have the right to interfere with the principles of mathematics and statistics…But that’s a scary subject for another day…)

The bottom line is that we Americans live in a diverse society, where different religions hold dramatically different beliefs about the matters Christian Nationalists want government to dictate.  For example, in several traditions, including my own, abortion is permissible. Nevertheless, here in Indiana, where our legislators routinely ignore the official neutrality required by the First Amendment, lawmakers have passed a law that imposes a belief held by some Christian denominations on members of denominations and faith traditions who do not share those religious beliefs.

It would be a serious mistake to think that Christian Nationalism is only inconsistent with the First Amendment. The racism and misogyny that is built into it also run afoul of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection guarantees. The constitutional requirement of equal protection is intended to prevent majorities (or in this case, activist minorities) from using government to disadvantage individuals and minorities of whom they disapprove

Essentially, the Equal Protection Clause requires government to treat citizens as individuals, not as members of a group. In the United States, our laws are supposed to be based upon a person’s civic behavior, not on gender, race or other markers of identity. So long as we citizens obey the laws, pay our taxes, and generally conduct ourselves in a way that does not endanger or disadvantage others, we are entitled to full equality with other citizens.  That guarantee of equal civic rights is one of the aspects of American life that has been most admired around the globe; it has unleashed the productivity of previously marginalized groups and contributed significantly to American prosperity. Christian Nationalism strikes at the very heart of that commitment to civic equality—it would privilege certain citizens over others based solely on their skin color and religious identity. It’s hard to think of anything more anti-American.

The conflict of Christian Nationalism with the Constitution and Bill of Rights isn’t limited to the First and Fourteenth Amendments. There is another incredibly important principle embedded in the Bill of Rights that we are already in danger of losing to the sustained assault of these pseudo-religious fanatics: the doctrine of substantive due process, often called the right to privacy or the right to personal autonomy.

I agree with the numerous constitutional scholars who argue that, although the right to personal autonomy or self-government is not explicitly mentioned, the principle is inherent in the Bill of Rights. That’s because it is impossible to give content to the rights that are specifically enumerated unless we recognize the doctrine of substantive due process –and that impossibility was explicitly recognized by the Supreme Court in 1965, in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut. Connecticut’s legislature had passed a law prohibiting the use of birth control by married couples. The legislation prohibited doctors from prescribing contraceptives and prohibited pharmacists from filling any such prescriptions. The Supreme Court struck down the law, holding that whether a couple used contraceptives simply wasn’t any of the government’s business; it was not a decision that government was entitled to make

The Court recognized that an individual right to personal autonomy—a right to self-government—is essential to the enforcement of the other provisions of the Bill of Rights.  Justices White and Harlan found explicit confirmation of it in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—which is where the terminology “substantive due process” comes from. Wherever it resided–in a “penumbra” or in the Ninth or 14th Amendment—the Justices agreed on both its presence and importance.

The doctrine of Substantive Due Process draws a line between decisions that government has the legitimate authority to make, and decisions which, in our system, must be left up to the individual. I used to tell my students that the Bill of Rights is essentially a list of things that government is forbidden to decide. What books you read, what opinions you form, what prayers you say (or don’t)—such matters are far outside the legitimate role of government. The issue isn’t whether that book is dangerous or inappropriate, or that religion is false, or whether you should marry someone of the same sex, or whether you should procreate: the issue is who gets to make that decision—the individual or the government. Allowing any unit of government to decide such matters violates the most fundamental premise of the Bill of Rights and the philosophy that underlies our constitutional system. Yet that is precisely what Christian Nationalists want.

Let me be clear: Government has the right–indeed, the obligation–to intervene when a person’s behaviors are harming people who haven’t consented to that harm. (Mask mandates to protect public health, or requirements that students be vaccinated before entering a public school classroom are examples.) Otherwise, in the constitutional system devised by the Founders, government must leave us alone.

For a long time, secular and religiously tolerant Americans dismissed warnings about the growing fundamentalist assaults on that principle, confident that their right to self-determination was secure.  The conservative Christian reasoning in Dobbs, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, justified an invasion of that personal liberty, and it was shocking. For the first time in American history, a Supreme Court had withdrawn a constitutional right that had been considered settled for over fifty years.

As polarizing as that decision was, there is still very little understanding of its scope, and the fact that it threatens far more than the health, well-being and self-determination of American women.

In this country, different religions—and different denominations within those religions– have very different beliefs about the status of women and about procreation. What amounts to the Supreme Court’s elevation of a particular version of Christianity has understandably engendered an enormous and negative reaction–a majority of Americans, including a majority of religiously-affiliated Americans, disagree with the Court’s decision, and are even more opposed to emerging efforts to make access to contraception difficult or impossible. What is still not fully appreciated, however, is the fact that Dobbs was more than just an effort to force women to give birth—it was a devastating assault on the American definition of individual liberty, a definition which draws a line between legitimate and impermissible government actions.

If there is no right to privacy—no substantive due process guarantee–if government can force women to give birth, government can move to make interracial or same-sex marriages illegal. It can outlaw birth control. It can forbid divorce. In short, it can decide those “intimate matters” that the Founders and former Supreme Court decisions protected against government over-reach.

So far, my discussion of these issues has been necessarily abstract—a discussion of principles. Let me just conclude by reminding you of the challenge we are facing right here in Indiana, where we have statewide officials who are self-identified Christian Nationalists and who demonstrate daily that they neither understand nor respect the Constitution.

The most obvious example is our Lieutenant Governor, Micah Beckwith, who has  pushed the racist White Replacement Theory, compared vaccination policies to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews, advocated that brown people crossing the border be shot, and accused the Indy Star, members of the left and Methodist and Lutheran ministers of wanting to cut off the private parts of children. When he served briefly on a library board, he tried to censor and remove books of which he disapproved, and he constantly engages in ugly diatribes against gay citizens. Most recently, he claimed that undocumented immigrants aren’t entitled to due process.

Todd Rokita, Indiana’s embarrassing Attorney General, has hounded and harassed a doctor who legally aborted a ten-year-old rape victim, and is engaged in a wide-ranging vendetta to root out efforts to foster racial and religious inclusion. I won’t go through Jim Banks’ numerous assaults on the American Idea, since as Fort Wayne residents you are undoubtedly already familiar with them. These men are so busy pursing a Christian Nationalist culture war, they don’t have much time to attend to the duties of their offices. They provide an excellent example of what government would be like in a country run by Christian Nationalists—aka, the Christian Taliban.

A country in the thrall of a Christian Nationalist worldview would look nothing like the America that most of us love and want to protect. We live in a dangerous time, but we cannot give in to fear and reaction, and we absolutely cannot allow Christian Nationalists, White Supremacists and other assorted bigots to jettison the legal system that has fostered American progress and been a beacon to oppressed people around the world.

Throughout our history, America has had to reckon with significant numbers of people who never accepted the premises of the system devised by the Founders. There have always been Puritans who–like the Planting Fathers–believed that they should be able to use government to control the lives and behaviors of everyone else. Throughout our history, we have always had to deal with America’s “original sin” of racism. We’ve had dark times. It wasn’t just the Civil War—I’m only one of the many old folks in this room who have lived through the Civil Rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the gay rights movement. American liberty has always been a work in progress—and has always been frantically resisted by those who have felt threatened and disoriented by social change. That said, the country has moved—granted, in fits and starts—toward realizing the ideals of liberty and civic equality set out in our constituent documents.

Because I am old, I often think of a folk song that was popular during the great upheavals of the 60’s. It was sung by Peter, Paul and Mary, and the chorus was “don’t let the light go out.” That should be our motto as we face this latest eruption of deeply unAmerican challenges from people who are threatened by diversity and dead-set against equality and inclusion.

Don’t let the light go out.

Thank you.

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A Constitutional Crisis

A few days ago, I participated in an Indiana Lawyer podcast investigating the question “Is America experiencing a Constitutional Crisis?”

Unfortunately, I was paired with Jim Bopp on the recording, which was a test of my ability to keep my cool. Bopp, for those of you who don’t know, was the lawyer who brought us Citizen United, and he’s never met a ‘librul’ who was right about anything. He also apparently resides in an alternate reality, where every lower court judge who’s ruled against Trump is a far-left liberal appointed by a Democrat, Trump’s daily insane Executive Orders are merely an example of the way past Presidents have tried to “push the envelope,” and voting by mail is an invitation to ballot theft…

There was more, but the stiff drink I imbibed when I got home helped.

When I got the call requesting that I participate in the podcast, I was told the questions would revolve around whether the country is currently experiencing a constitutional crisis. I think the answer is yes.

Of course, whether we are currently experiencing such a crisis depends upon your preferred definition. One line of thinking defines a Constitutional Crisis as a situation in which a President defies a clear mandate by the Surpreme Court. I think that is far too restrictive a definition; instead, I would argue that the loss of a fundamental basis of constitutional functioning qualifies–and I think it is beyond argument that we are witnessing such a loss.

America’s constitutional structure is based upon the Separation of Powers. The Founders who crafted the Constitution were greatly influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, especially the philosophy of Baron de Montesquieu, who wrote The Spirit of Laws. Montesquieu argued that, in order for liberty to thrive, government authority must be divided into three distinct branches—legislative, executive, and judicial—each with independent powers and responsibilities. That division, he argued, would prevent the concentration of power leading to autocracy, and would provide a system of checks and balances.

The Founders embraced that structure, expecting that each branch–jealous of its prerogatives–would check excesses attempted by the others. Despite some unfortunate missteps, It has basically worked that way.

Until now.

One after another, Trump’s Executive Orders have claimed authority that the Constitution explicitly gives to the other branches–primarily, Congress. (Interestingly, the Founders conceived of Congress as the “first among equals”–the legislative branch, in their conception, would be the branch exercising the greatest authority.) These attempts would not, in themselves, constitute a constitutional crisis–the crisis comes from the cowardly, arguably treasonous refusal of the Republicans who dominate the legislative branch to assert their constitutional prerogatives. And that crisis has been amplified–shamefully–by the Supreme Court. Despite the valiant efforts of the lower federal courts to constrain Trump, our rogue Supreme Court has used its Shadow Docket to summarily overturn the considered and thoughtful decisions of Judges who–contrary to Jim Bopp’s fond misconceptions–were nominated by Presidents of both parties, and include judges named by Trump. That rogue Court has weakened the rule of law by failing to follow its own precedents and by distorting settled constitutional jurisprudence.

The one observation by Bopp with which I agreed  was his statement that personnel reflects policy. Any reasonable evaluation of the clowns, drunkards, conspiracy theorists and assorted grifters installed by Trump will reflect the utter lack of policy–not to mention competence– that permeates this administration. (Corruption and grifting aren’t policy.)

If we aren’t having a constitutional crisis, I don’t know what one would look like…

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An Insider Analysis

Some of the most distressed observers of our national plunge into the very unAmerican, neo-fascist nightmare we’re experiencing are the political strategists who spent years working to elect Republicans. A number of them are now “Never Trumpers” who are wrestling with hard questions: how much of GOP rhetoric was simply PR? What was it in the GOP incentive structure that took the party down this disastrous path? What were the danger signals they failed to see?

One of those Never Trumpers is Stuart Stevens, and a while back, he wrote an essay in the Bulwark in which he tried to trace how the “law and order party had become the party of Jeffrey Epstein.” As he began,

Let me begin with a question that a lot of us are asking ourselves. How did we get here? How is it that right now, as we speak, there are American citizens that haven’t been charged with a crime, much less convicted, sitting in a concentration camp in Florida while one of the most notorious, evil, child sex traffickers of our time has cut some sweetheart deal so that she has been transferred from a prison in Florida to a Club Fed in Texas?

Stevens noted that Maxwell’s transfer violated clear Prison Bureau guidelines, and questioned how America had gotten to so lawless a place. “How did it happen? Well, the easy answer is that we elected Donald Trump. But that’s really a cop-out because it’s not just Donald Trump.”

When Trump first started to dominate the Republican Party, many of my Bush-era Republican friends talked about how Donald Trump had hijacked our party. This never made sense to me. The hijacker on the plane is not popular with the passengers. No one is thanking the hijacker for the chance to go to Cuba instead of grandma’s house. But Donald Trump quickly became the most popular figure in the Republican Party by a wide margin.

That, of course, is the question all sane Americans are constantly asking ourselves–especially those (like yours truly) who spent years in the Republican Party, assuming that the party’s political rhetoric accurately reflected its political and philosophical beliefs. As Stevens glumly concludes, “Trump didn’t hijack the Party, he revealed it.”

It’s hard to disagree with that conclusion; as Stevens writes, “People don’t abandon deeply held beliefs in a matter of months… What the party called ‘bedrock principles’ turned out to be nothing more than marketing slogans.”

As Stevens probes the reason for the GOP’s enthusiastic embrace of Trump, he comes to the same conclusion I did. It all goes back to America’s original sin: racism.  He points to the telling homogeneity of today’s Republican Party.

Race is the original sin of the modern Republican Party. This isn’t new to the Trump era. In 1956, Eisenhower got 39% of the Black vote. In 1964, Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act and received 7% of the Black vote. In 2020, Trump got 12% of the Black vote, a number he improved to 13% in 2024. That’s a six-point increase in 60 years.

In the Bush 43 years, in what seems like a long time ago in a galaxy far away, the party admitted it had failed to attract Black voters and took responsibility for the failure. In 2005, the Chairman of the Republican Party, Ken Melman, gave a speech at the NAACP convention apologizing for the Southern Strategy, which leveraged white racist anger to maximize Republican votes. Does it mean anything that you apologized? I think it does. It’s an acknowledgement that what had happened is wrong and that the party had to endeavor to earn more Black support.

That all ended in 2016 with Donald Trump’s openly racist campaign.

Today’s parties have sorted themselves into White Nationalists versus everyone else.

As Stevens notes, the homogeneity of the Republican Party makes it much easier to message to core voters than it is to message to the far more diverse Democratic Party. And Stevens ties that observation to the fecklessness of Congressional Republicans, pointing out that a “party that spends 60 years relying on candidates who can win by maximizing white voters inevitably draws a different kind of candidate than a party that requires appealing to a more diverse electorate.” That observation goes a long way toward explaining the current Republican politicians who exhibit “a North Korean-style supplication to their leader.”

It’s hard to discount Stevens’ “insider analysis.”

His essay answers the persistent question–why on earth would anyone vote for a pathetic, delusional ignoramus in possession of not a single redeeming human quality? That answer is depressingly simple. For far too many voters, primal hatreds overcome humanity and rational self-interest.

But who knew there were so many of them?

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The Scalpel Versus The Blunderbuss

Every day, we see another headline reporting another example of Trump’s continuing–and often random– assault on federal governance and scientific expertise. A recent example, and not even one of the most consequential, was a decision scrapping satellite observations of Earth. Administration officials decided that those satellites “go beyond the essential task of predicting the weather.” In Trumpworld, only weather forecasts warrant government investment — not instruments that monitor climate, and–horrors!– might confirm the reality of climate change.

As the Washington Post reported,

Language in a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budget calls for preserving funding for the National Weather Service while slashing anything tied to climate change, limiting government investment to “research that is more directly related to the NOAA mission.” It echoed a call in the Republican policy playbook Project 2025 to dismantle climate research, which the report said drives “the climate change alarm industry,” while continuing to improve weather forecasting accuracy.

But scientists said there is no such division between weather and climate — and that losing climate data will actually hurt weather forecasting.

The article explains the fallacy at the root of this particular decision, but it is representative of the incompetence–and increasing insanity– of the entire administration.  It’s just one example of what happens when decisions about governance are dictated by ideology rather than science or evidence. (Then, of course, there are the decisions that simply reflect Trump’s pique and uninformed tantrums…)

I count myself among the many critics who can point to areas of American government clearly requiring reform and reconsideration. But as any rational adult understands–and as the damage inflicted by Elon Musk and his band of DOGE children amply demonstrated– effective reform is considerably different from uninformed destruction.

It’s the difference between the scalpel and the blunderbuss.

Thoughtful reform begins with basic questions: is this activity a proper function of government, or might it better be left to the private sector? If it is something that we should expect government to do, should it be done “in house,” by public servants, or is it something that should be contracted out while being monitored by government? if the latter, does government have the capacity and resources to do that monitoring?

Once we have answered those questions, and decided that–yes, this is an activity that is appropriately governmental–the exercise moves to the next step. What is this activity accomplishing? How well is it performing? If we discontinue or materially change it, what are the likely consequences? Are those consequences acceptable?

Answering such questions requires–at a minimum–an understanding of what the activity entails, the reasons it is being conducted, the reason government is doing it, the identity of businesses and citizens who rely upon it, and the consequences to them and the public of altering or discontinuing it. Once in possession of that information, a cost/benefit analysis can be conducted and a considered decision can be made.

Forgive me for belaboring the obvious, but this process bears absolutely no relationship to the wholesale blunderbuss being taken to our governing structures by the uninformed, incompetent buffoons and cranks who occupy positions of authority in the current administration. As the linked article concludes,

Satellite data might prove impossible to replace once cut off, scientists said.

More than ever, accurate weather prediction depends on climate science, said Riishojgaard, whose center works with government satellite agencies on data algorithms. Meteorology and climate science depend on the same data, and to a large extent, the same computer models, which are informed by a record of satellite data that now goes back nearly 50 years, he said.

“You now cannot do weather prediction without understanding the climate,” Riishojgaard said. “If you ignore the past, it’s like you’re looking out the window in the morning and saying, ‘What’s going to happen?’”

What, indeed?

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FloraDUH Again

Following in RFK, Jr.’s demented footsteps, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has announced that the state will no longer require any vaccinations. That includes the longstanding requirements that children entering public school classrooms receive inoculations that have long been required to protect themselves and–importantly– their classmates. 

Ladapo also acknowledged that his team had not conducted any studies on the effects of removing state vaccine mandates, because, he claimed, it is an “issue of right and wrong in terms of whether parents should be able to control, have ultimate authority over what happens to their kids’ bodies.”

I will leave it to medical experts (a category that clearly does not include either RFK, Jr. or Ladapo) to explain the likely real-world consequences of this insane decision to reject decades of scientific and medical evidence. But I do want to point to a statement by Ladapo illustrating that his ignorance of the law and constitution are equal–if not superior–to his disdain for history and medical science.

A number of media reports have included Ladapo’s statement that government has no right to dictate to citizens what they should put in their bodies. He actually said “You have sovereignty over your body.”

If your first reaction to that rather astonishing claim was something to the effect of “then how can government force women to give birth? If women have sovereignty over their bodies, abortion bans are clearly illegal” you’d have a lot of company. 

But that incredible hypocrisy isn’t even the worst of it.

If government didn’t have the right to require certain behaviors, including health measures, there would be no reason to appoint Surgeon Generals. The proper question is: when and under what circumstances does government have the right to mandate such behaviors–and the answer to that requires a basic understanding of the underlying libertarian premise of America’s constitution, which does indeed accord sovereignty over an individual’s decisions to that individual until and unless those decisions harm people who have not consented to that harm.

Remember smallpox? As far back as 1777, George Washington faced a smallpox epidemic that was devastating his army, and he ordered the compulsory variolation (the forerunner of vaccinations) of all his troops. Washington’s edict is considered the first mass immunization policy in American history, but it certainly wasn’t the last. In 1813, President James Madison signed “An Act to Encourage Vaccination,” which established the United States Vaccine Agency and allowed free postal delivery of vaccine materials. And in 1905, the Supreme Court affirmed states’ authority to pass and enforce compulsory vaccination laws “for the common welfare” in Jacobson v. Massachusetts. 

The U.S. Constitution allows us to destroy our own bodies by indulging in unhealthy habits, or refusing medical care. It does not allow us to endanger our fellow citizens. Despite the selfish complaints of people who didn’t want to abide by masking rules during the pandemic, our legal system does not permit us to wilfully engage in behaviors that are highly likely to endanger others. The issue is not whether we retain complete authority over our bodies, no matter what the circumstances. That question has been answered–we don’t. The correct question is: under what circumstances can the government require us to take measures that protect other members of the public?

If FloraDUH goes through with this truly insane measure, it is likely to accelerate the state’s already-substantial exodus of educated citizens–an exodus initiated by Governor DeSantis’ assault on higher education. It’s also likely to put a significant dent in the tourism that supports FloriDUH’s economy. (I certainly wouldn’t take children or grandchildren to a Disneyland where they are likely to mingle with unvaccinated Florida natives.)

I can see the tourism slogans now. “Come to Florida, where the sun doesn’t shine on rainbow crosswalks, where our universities are staffed only with instructors who can’t find jobs elsewhere, and where our unvaccinated children infect both other children and medically-vulnerable oldsters.”

FloriDUh–a perfect example of a Red state.

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