In John Irving’s The Cider House Rules, Dr. Larch considers himself an abortionist out of obligation, because of the practice’s illegality. He argues with his protege Homer that his personal feelings on the matter are irrelevant as long as women are forbidden from availing themselves of abortion as an option. According to Larch, only if and when abortion was legal could Homer allow himself the luxury of personal conscience; until then, however, he expected Homer to fight for the women who came seeking deliverance. (Please note: this is not a commentary on this view of abortion — both proponents and detractors have much stronger arguments than those barely hinted at here. It’s not even a commentary on the moral stances of the characters involved.)
I homeschool my kids. Such as it is, anyhow (the more accurate term is “unschooling”). Homeschooling being a fringe activity, you run into a lot of fringe viewpoints (and you can use this site as Exhibit A), and one with a lot of currency among homeschoolers is distrust of vaccines almost on principle. As a scientifically-minded person, this drives me nuts. Seeing otherwise reasonable folks reject one of the greatest medical achievements of the previous two centuries, endangering not only their children, but other children and adults as well, angers me greatly. However, I feel an obligation to defend their right to make that profoundly irresponsible choice from those who would allow them no choice at all. As important as vaccination is, liberty is even more important to a healthy society.
There are many things one can peaceably do with one’s own freedom. You can try to better everyone’s lot in life, or just your own. You can waste it, or what’s more, use it to convince thousands of others to waste theirs as well. But the only right one can have to sit in judgment of how another has chosen to peaceably use their freedom comes from the fact that one acknowledges their right to freedom in the first place. The person who would say “See how he exercises his freedom when it’s granted? This is why I cannot permit him to keep it.” already believes that their desired outcomes are not only worth more than another’s, but that that fact entitles them to grant or revoke his freedom as it suits. To them I have nothing to say, as befits the chattel they take people for. I will not waste words on those who refuse to treat others as fellow humans. I may share or dispute their moral assessment of another, but while they insist that their moral assessment is a cudgel with which they may compel their peaceable but allegedly moral inferiors, they are unworthy of pronouncing moral judgment. Against them, I will side with the miser and the wastrel. Both are the moral superior of the highwayman.
Have you ever looked into the profession of chiropractors and how objectivistic they’re skills are. They’re job is to set the body up in its peak physical condition for the sole purpose of the body then taking over and taking care of itself.
“I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
The same goes for the body. It doesn’t need outside drugs to take care of it. It can and will take care of itself.
Vaccines are drugs. Tylenol are drugs. Drugs (“good” or “bad”) are, and will always, be drugs.
A = A
The whole premise comes down to the person himself and how much they love their body and essentially their life. A willful acceptance of any drug into the body is a willing acceptance of death, pure and simple.
I have three chiropractors in the family, I have never done drugs, including headache medicine, and I am so proud that I do accept life in its fullest.
On a side note, Bakersfield’s Tea Party is only a few weeks away, and my dad and I will be on the front lines – I in my “Enjoy Capitalism” t-shirt and he in his “John Galt/Golden Dollar Sign” t-shirt…
There’s good times ahead…
I hope so. The Tea Parties are one of the signs that people are wiping the sleep from their eyes.
Seeing as it’s totally off topic, I don’t mind debating your “willful acceptance of death” assertion. I need the distraction
. I challenge you to defend your statement that the body “can and will take care of itself”. It’s possibly true in a very vague, pointless sort of way, but your conclusion that the body “doesn’t need outside drugs to take care of it” implies that the outcomes sans drugs are always preferable to the medicated alternative. Bullshit. Why would I, why should I prefer to have a wisdom tooth extracted without nitrous oxide for the pain and a synthetic penicillin for infection control? I love my life. There’s nothing ennobling about choosing to endure unneeded pain or risking avoidable infection. Hell, those infectious agents are not my body any more than a pack of feral dogs are. Or would you recommend I take no steps to fight them off should they attack? Won’t my body “take care of itself”?
Of course, my body is taking care of itself. It hosts a mind that knows how to deal with these threats and nuisances.
This discussion is a pretty good example of what I’m talking about in this post, I must say. I think you might be a bit of a nut on this topic (no offense intended, man, or at least none more offensive than you telling me that I willingly accept death “pure and simple”
), but I’d rather have you in my corner, still recognizing the right to my own conclusions, than a scientist who thinks her correctness entitles her to override her neighbors’ incorrectness.
lol I don’t see it as totally off topic, I was presenting a view from the non vaccine side. The fact that it drove you nuts gave me the impression that you didn’t know the reasons for they’re side – so I presented them…
When all other options are exhausted, and you are in danger of dying, yes, I agree that drugs would then be acceptable considering that life is the most important thing and if you’re going to lose it, you should do what ever you can to support it.
But that fact isn’t an excuse for drugs to be held with such conviction as the greatest thing in the world and the go to fix up for when you’re feeling ill.
EX: Headaches are caused by a pinched nerve. The realignment of your body is meant to remove the pinch, thus removing the headache.
Drugs “fix” the headache by tricking your mind into thinking you’re alright with a painkiller. They do not fix you, they give you a reason to lie to yourself. And accepting that lie as truth is an acceptance of death.
For truth is where all things come down to. There are no gray areas in reason.
I believe that because my ideas are based on the truth that I am correct and that anyone who bases they’re correctness on a lie no longer has truth on they’re side and are incorrect.
I accept people’s right to choose the path of their freedom themselves. But that does not mean that the path they have chosen is automatically equal to mine and above my overriding. If it is path is based on a lie, I view it as below mine because I don’t accept a lie as the truth.
There’s a fundamental flaw in the world today: equality without challenge.
I see it as all paths and people have the potential for equality, and that if that potential is acted out based on a lie, it loses its equality to the potential acted out on truth.
On the “Choice to Homeschool” and “Not Vaccinate”
O.K. you’ll be “Shocked, Shocked” to learn we are both Christians and the wife and all her siblings graduated from the “Harvard of Christian Colleges” Wheaton college … and her brother went on to become a tenured professor at the real “Harvard” (Linguistics).
“We chose to Homeschool 4 kids” thru 6th grade at a time we lived in Stockton CA; Which became the “Murder Capital of the U.S.” in the late 1980′s and the High Schoolls there were patolled with police with dogs … on the Inside during school hours.
The decision to Homeschool wasn’t tough to make … it was tougher to accomplish but we did it.
The decision to vaccinate and for which ones was also not too tough to make … Pertussis vaccine NOT … jury still out at the time whether there was a risk of inducing Autism … after 1 year old not a deadly disease … keep the kid close to home and nurse the child till about 6 months old to confer the mother’s immunities as much as possible; Polio vaccine … killed vaccine which was available from Canada and tho conferred lower immunity … the few cases at the time in the U.S. seemed to be attributed to “Live vaccine accidents”.
Diptheria vaccine … fine … do it. Rubella , mumps etc. fine … go for it.
Maybe we were just lucky. Oldest son … just got into Cal Berkeley as a Transfer, youngest daughter is at UCSB … and two middle have graduated from Wheaton and one in Med. School another working and doing Graduate work in Finance.
Personally pursuing the Goal of locating finding and financing the Hobby Farm/Ranch in the Pacific Northwest or Rockies for our personal “Going John Galt”, if we ever need to, as an entire extended Clan.
I totally agree with the conversation above as I have also homeschooled my both children.