Posted on 02/07/2015 9:10:17 AM PST by rey
Rights and responsibilities
EDITOR: I’m so tired of people who don’t have their children vaccinated because they claim they have the right not to have their children vaccinated. I suggest they read the preamble to the Constitution, from which our rights are derived. The preamble clearly states that one of the purposes of the Constitution is “to promote the general welfare.” It seems to me that means that the general welfare is more important than individuals.
I believe it was the late Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” I would interpret that to mean that people do not have the right to expose other pupils to measles, because their children are not vaccinated. If your children are not vaccinated against measles during a measles epidemic, keep them home.
As parents, you made a decision not to have your children vaccinated. Now take the responsibilities for your actions like a grownup.
Also, his idea that individual rights are subject to the rights of others is skewed, at best.
Finally, our rights, if he read the constitution, are not derived from the constitution or man, but are God given and inherit.
That said, I am not anti vaccine and haven't a strong opinion about mandatory vaccination, but I do know this letter writer's logic is absent. I share his concern about diseased riddled people roaming about, but know we are not subjects of the federal government.
I left off the link and the writer's name because last time I posted a letter to the editor the letter writer was harassed. Despite the wrongness of his opinion, he is entitled to it.
Better yet, keep them in Mexico.
The reason our Constition is trampled beyond recognition of the original Founders intent is because of idiots like this guy.
There is a huge difference in the meaning of "provide" and "promote". One requires expenditures, one allows for advice. Plus, neither changes article 1, section 8 which clearly define the limits within what the federal government may tax and spend for, it is within those confines that the feds may do anything.
The word “welfare” does not mean what it used to mean...
Like lefists stand the word “progressive” on it’s head..
they do the same to other words.. like “welfare”...
they have even taken “the word “liberal” and sodomized it..
I think promoting the general welfare would more accurately prevent disease carrying people from entering the country.
While it is quaint to cite portions of the Preamble when seeking to justify this or that policy, it's important to note that the U.S. Supreme Court held in 1905 (Jacobson v. Massachusetts) that the Preamble is not a source of federal power or individuals' rights.
And, that is the right answer!
The Supreme Court ruled in Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905) that mandatory vaccination laws were constitutional. The case involved smallpox vaccination during a time in which thousands were dying of smallpox.
Read the decision at:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=197&invol=11
Vaccinations are required in order to travel abroad and except for illegal aliens they are required for all persons entering into the United States.
While I don’t think that the government can require all citizens to get a vaccine, they have always had the right to quarantine people with communicable diseases in order to prevent an outbreak of disease.
So, while you may have a right not to be vaccinated, you also may be obligated to stay away from public facilities such as schools or parks if you haven’t.
The problem with this measles outbreak is that children who are too young to be vaccinated are catching it. The failure of too many people to vaccinate their children is now endangering children who are too young to get the vaccine.
So...if the writer’s kids are vaccinated, what’s the worry? Won’t get measles, right? That’s the purpose of the vaccine, correct?
Seems the only real exposure (apart from failed vaccinations) would be to others not vaccinated...
"It cannot be presumed that any clause in the Constitution is intended to be without effect, and therefore such construction is inadmissible unless the words require it." ~ Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137
The interpretation of the General Welfare clause as a general grant of power separate from any of the others would cause most of Article I, section 8 to be "without effect." That alone destroys the argument that the General Welfare clause grants additional power to Congress instead of acting as a further restraint on how it uses the enumerated powers it is specifically granted. To interpret the General Welfare clause as a general grant of additional powers would render the explicit enumeration of powers that follow the General Welfare clause superfluous, since the scope of powers included in "for the general welfare" is far broader than that of the explicitly enumerated ones.
The General Welfare clause simply requires that, when Congress passes laws to regulate commerce (for example,) they must do so with the aim and effect of promoting the general welfare. It does not mean they can pass laws that promote the general welfare that don't qualify as an exercise of a granted power.
Were that not the case, the enumeration of specifically granted powers would have been completely unnecessary, and could have been left out of Article I without any change to the powers granted to Congress. But that cannot be the correct interpretation, because one of the most revered and influential rulings in the history of the Supreme Court said that interpreting the Constitution that way was impermissible.
Before the Constitution had even been ratified, critics argued that the "General Welfare" clause was a general grant of unlimited power. James Madison refuted that interpretation in The Federalist #41:
Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power “to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms “to raise money for the general welfare.” But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.”
When Article I, section 8 enumerates the powers granted to Congress, there is only one sentence where Congress is granted any power to actually make any laws whatsoever:
"The Congress shall have Power...To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof."
There is no other sentence in the entire text of the original Constitution that specifically grants Congress any authority to make any laws.
Yes, Article I does say "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." But the intent of those words is clearly not to grant Congress unlimited authority to legislate as they please, but rather to explicitly limit whatever law-making authority that the Constitution is granting so that it applies to Congress alone, and does not apply to either the President or to the Supreme Court. The words that limit the grant of legislative authority to Congress do not say what legislative powers are granted, only that whatever they are, they are granted to Congress—and by omission of any such grant of authority, are denied to anyone else.
Similarly, the grant to Congress of the authority to "regulate commerce" is not a grant of authority to do so by making any laws. Congress could "regulate commerce" in other ways, such as by making treaties, signing contracts with the states, or even by signing contracts with private parties.
It is only the "Necessary And Proper Clause" that actually grants Congress any power to make laws in order to pursue the ends it is authorized to pursue by the preceding enumeration of the powers that it is being granted in Article I, section 8. So the clear intent and effect of the "Necessary and Proper Clause" is to require that whenever Congress does pass any laws, those laws must be for the purpose of "carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers," must be "necessary" for that purpose," and must be "proper" (rightful.)
That such is the intended meaning is made irrefutable by the text of the additional Amendments that grant Congress additional powers (some grant no additional powers.) Every single one of them that does grant additional powers includes a clause similar to the one included in the 26th Amendment (the last one ratified to date): "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
That fact conclusively proves that the grant of the power to seek a goal or an end, or to attempt to achieve a purpose, is separate and distinct from the power to make laws in order to pursue that end, goal, or purpose. Were that not the case, the additional clauses added to Amendments that specifically grant Congress the power to make laws in order to exercise or enforce the powers granted by the Amendments would be redundant. And an interpretation of the Constitution that makes entire numbered clauses redundant is "impermissible," according to Marbury vs. Madison.
So again, there is no way that the "Necessary and Proper Clause" was ever intended as a general grant of power beyond those that had just been explicitly enumerated. Had the "Necessary and Proper" clause been intended as a grant of additional authority instead of as a constraint on the laws that could be made pursuant to granted authorities, why bother enumerating any grants of authority at all?
For that reason, and also (independently) because of the precise wording used, the grant of the power to make laws that would be necessary and proper as a means to pursue the ends authorized by the Constitution could only have been intended as yet an additional restriction on the powers granted, so that to be Constitutional, the laws that Congress makes must not only be honest attempts to use a granted authority, must not also be for the general welfare, but must also be necessary for that purpose, and must also be proper (rightful.)
It is never "proper," never rightful, to violate the rights of individuals. Never. That means that the correct interpretation of the "necessary and proper" clause is that, although Congress may "build post roads," it may not kill people in order to do so, because that would not be proper (rightful,) no matter how "necessary" it might be in order to build a post road in some specific case. The same holds for any other individual right, and for any other granted power.
People legally enter this country for all kinds of reasons every day. And since measles is contagious before symptoms appear, and it is one of the most contagious diseases known, you cannot possible prevent someone who is contagious from entering the country. As we are seeing with the Disneyland outbreak, it only takes one contagious person to encounter a pocket of anti-vaccine fanatics to cause a huge and expensive problem.
The rationale for mandatory vaccines is that you do not have the right to expose others to dangerous diseases, any more than you have the right to ignore traffic signals and barge across intersections, or to knock down your neighbor's house because it is blocking your view.
I really really wish it was only anti-vaxxer's kids who would bear the brunt of their parent's decision to leave them vulnerable to dangerous diseases. Unfortunately, it is kids of parents who very much want to protect their kids but can't, usually because their kids are too young to receive the vaccine. Babies who are too young to receive a vaccine are also the most likely to die if they catch a vaccine-preventable disease, and are therefore the most dependent on the herd immunity produced when everyone who is old enough is fully vaccinated.
Promoting the general welfare is not the same as forcing people to do as the government dictates.
Vaccines are a public health issue. In order for the population to benefit from vaccination, almost everyone has to be vaccinated to create herd immunity. If a neighborhood vaccination rate is too low, then the youngest people and the immunologically compromised have no protection against diseases that can kill them.
When parents choose not to vaccinate their children, they are not just risking their own children's health and life, they are endangering other people's children. And those other people are probably not very happy with the prospect that someone's stupid decision risks *their* children.
So you are saying everyone should be required to get a flu shot? I have read babies, and the elderly are most at risk for the flu virus.
If those "other people's" children are vaccinated then what is the problem?
Why stop at measles? How about exposing pupils to thoughts, Or people of other races?"
-PJ
The problem is the vaccine mentality. I grew up before there was any vaccine. We all tried to get the measles or chicken pox just to get out of going to school. Now the disease is a deadly one. Bull S—t. They never state how MANY ARE GETTING THIS DISEASE THAT HAVE BEEN VACCINATED. The vaccine is not that good. How many die or are crippled due to the vaccine?
I’M NOT THE IDIOT, YOU ARE. YOU JUST MADE MY POINT - THE VACCINE ISN’T THE CURE ALL. CRAWL BACK UNDER YOUR BED FOOL.
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