by Tom Evslin
Bernie Sanders sounds like he may agree with Tucker Carlson.
At a meeting Monday Senator Sanders said he had a message for men: “I want you all to be thinking about how you would feel if the government, state government, federal government, told you what you have to do with your own body. You would say this is outrageous, this is unacceptable, this is a denial of my basic rights and it is.”
This is exactly the language opponents of mandatory vaccination use to justify their resistance to mandates: you’re trying to tell me what to do with my body.
Now, of course, I’m quoting Sanders out of context. He was at a roundtable with abortion rights advocates and was trying to make the point that abortion is not just a women’s issue but actually a human rights issue. (You can read the full context in VT Digger here or watch Sanders remarks on WCAX). I haven’t heard his position on vaccine mandates
It is possible both to be for legal access to abortion (in most cases) and to support vaccine mandates (in most cases); I am. However, if government can’t tell people what to do with their bodies, it can’t tell them they have to be vaccinated. Not even a US Senator gets to have it both ways.
I asked friends in the Vermont press why no reporter seems to have asked Sanders whether he supports vaccine mandates given his “hand off my body” position. “Sanders hasn’t answered question from the Vermont Press for years,” they told me. So I asked him using the correspondence form on his website; I’ll let you know if I hear back and what I hear back. If you’re curious, you may want to ask as well.
Tucker Carlson also appeals to men in his anti-mandatory-vaccine screed. He says that requiring the military to be vaccinated is a ploy to “identify the sincere Christians in the ranks, the free thinkers, the men with high testosterone levels, and anybody else who doesn’t love Joe Biden and make them leave immediately.” I don’t think Bernie would agree that Biden’s vaccine mandate is a plot to take over the military. But Bernie does seem to agree that the government has no right to tell people what to with their bodies; that is what he said.
The extreme political left and right may actually be closer to each other than they are to us reasonable people in the middle.
See also: Most Workers Should be Required to Get Vaccinations
The author, an entrepreneur, IT expert, and former Vermont state cabinet officer, publishes the blog Fractals of Change. He lives in Stowe.
Categories: Commentary
I get it, Mr. Evslin. You and your minions created the Covid pandemic to counter the recent and limited increase in regulations on abortion in certain States. While death by Covid isn’t something one chooses, and the vaccines are anything but certain protection, with perhaps a one in one hundred certainty of death if infected – death by abortion is a choice, and its death rate is absolute. 61 million souls have passed since 1973’s Roe v. Wade decision. That’s more than 1.3 million per year on average. Now God only knows to what lengths you will go to make the pandemic odds more equal in order to justify abortion on demand. Shame on you for making such a macabre comparison.
Mr. Evslin,
All of your writings avoid answering the “real subject” at hand. The foundational matter is the protection of “human life.” Like many others, you keep the subject superficial and only about a woman’s body, so you can avoid having to answer very important foundational questions.
Will you please answer the following questions?
1.) When does a human life become a human life?
2.) When is a human soul formed?
3.) Are you opposed to the murder of human beings?
4.) Does a man who fathered a life have any rights?
COVID-19, abortion, BLM, CRT, wide-open Southern border, climate change, mail-in ballots, stimulus checks, and endless currency printing, is all the NWO/IMF/WHO – welcome to the New World Order Global Reset. We have only two choices – fight for our Republic for which it stands (we the people) or lose it all to never-ending control and manipulation – which equates to living in fear and servitude to the Global Federation for rest of our lives and generations thereafter. What is happening now is only a small taste of what else these demons have planned for humanity.
“Reasonable people”? A FORCED vaccine for a virus w/a 99.5% (healthy folks) survival rate? And now a CDC director overruling the FDA’s recommendation for “boosters” as Biden’s lackey? Don’t EVER mention “science” again to me! To “vtbeliever”‘s questions, 1) A “human life” could be argued as beginning at conception, “science” shows us this, 2) When is a human soul formed? Hhmmm.. Where DO all these “souls” come from? If humans have been around for barely a short time, as a species, WHERE DID these BILLIONS of “souls” come from? Were they all just waiting somewhere while a handful of “hominids” became BILLIONS of people now? Damn good question! 3) “Are you opposed to the murder of human beings?” Easy question, some “”matter” more than others it seems, just look at the homicide case closure rate, the rate seems to depend on the standing or monetary worth of the victim.4) “Does the father have any rights?” Only AFTER conception, and even then mostly pecuniary regarding child support payments resulting in jail time for non-payment of. The BIG question is “when DOES life begin?” and for this I usually consult the Bible where therein there ARE penalties for harming a pregnant woman and it clearly states that life begins “when you draw your first breath and ends when you draw your last”. If God almighty didn’t want any abortions would he/she not have said so in the New or Old Testament? Whatever happened to “safe, legal & RARE”? What with advances in birth control, morning after pills, etc. WHY are we still having this debate? Because this IS a nasty, grisly, heinous “procedure” that is made even worse by the trafficking in fetal parts and tissues, and, with modern birth control, mostly unnecessary to boot. That being said, it looks like we go back to the “old days” where women “traveled” to states that allow this brutish infanticide to get the “procedure” or stay home and raise an unwanted child or put it up for adoption, there are plenty of folks willing to give a baby a chance at life. Tough decisions all around it seems.
What health threat to others does an abortion pose?
Abortion is the murder of a helpless, innocent and valuable human life with a beating heart.
Would you be able to stand by quietly and watch the murder of any helpless human being in another situation? Are you saying it wouldn’t affect you in any way? I believe your conscience should be assaulted and your sense of justice should be impassioned.