I am convinced that the mask and vaccine mandates are unlawful and therefore should have never been implemented by government at ANY level.  To place one-size-fits-all policies healthcare in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats opens the door for them to abuse their authority over society, and in so-doing they become the...

The Moral Case Against Mandatory Public Health Measures

• By: Julius Ruechel
• February 4, 2022

Do you remember the moral riddle taught in grade school called the “Bystander at the Switch” (also known as the Trolley Problem)? It was a story about a runaway train hurtling towards a cluster of people stuck on the tracks ahead. But you have the option to pull the switch and send the train down another track with a smaller number of people on it. You have the option of saving some lives by sacrificing a smaller number of others. Do you pull the switch?

In grade school the riddle was posed as a moral dilemma. But it’s not. There was only ever one correct choice. We invented universal human rights to make it clear that no person or government has the right to pull the switch to send the train down another track towards a sacrificial group of victims. 

In December of 1948, in the aftermath of the human rights violations committed during the Second World War, the member states of the United Nations formally adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It explicitly forbids government from treating some people as worth less than others. It forbids government from imposing a hierarchy of rights on their citizens. It forbids government from sacrificing some people for the benefit of others. It forbids government from knowingly imposing harm on some individuals in order to serve an alleged greater good.

Unconditional individual rights elevate the rights of individuals above government authority. They are the checks and balances that place hard limits on government power, which cannot be overstepped no matter what voting mobs or ideological leaders may believe would best serve “the greatest good for the greatest number of people”. 

But during COVID, governments abandoned those principles and embarked on the exact question posed by the riddle of the Bystander at the Switch. This is not a game; there are real lives at stake. By crossing the line from issuing recommendations to imposing mandatory mandates, governments chose to pull the switch. By imposing lockdowns, mandatory mask mandates, social distancing rules, vaccine mandates, and so on, governments stripped individuals of their autonomy and prevented them from managing all the risks and priorities in their individual lives. By taking this step, governments gave themselves the authority to play God with our lives, “for our safety”. They gave themselves the right to sacrifice some people in the hope that those sacrificed would provide a benefit to others. 

Aztec priests offering up a living human heart to their deity, for the benefit of the “greater good”. From Discovery and Conquest of the New World, by Washington Irving, 1831. (Patrick Gray, CC BY 2.0)

Are you essential or non-essential? Are you vaccinated or unvaccinated? Each category now has different rights and freedoms and different levels of individual autonomy. Some have the “privilege” to earn a living. Others do not. Some have the “privilege” to choose how to balance the risks and priorities in their lives. Others do not. 

And what about the collateral damage caused by these policies? Mandatory lockdowns and other coercive measures are leading to the deaths of countless individuals through cancelled/delayed medical operations, suicides, drug overdoses, loneliness and isolation in nursing homes, and more. None of those deaths would happen if government had not made their public health measures mandatory. Government is choosing to throw one group of people onto the tracks with the goal of saving another. 

And our governments are......read this EXCELLENT article in it's entirety