OPINION:
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott just banned private businesses, public businesses, any businesses at all, from forcing employees to get the coronavirus vaccine as a condition of work.
Abbott for president!
Seriously: This is leadership. This is how American leaders should operate.
Free choice, particularly individual decision-making on medical issues, is a core component of freedom. If the government can force you to take experimental medical treatments — another way of saying drugs issued under “emergency use authorization” — then the boundary lines that keep the public servants in check, and subservient to the people, are obliterated. This is not about the measles, mumps and rubella shots that children generally must take before entering school — though even those vaccines come with exemptions, and even those vaccine mandates seem in some spots of the nation to curiously skip over the illegal immigrant community.
This is about a vaccine that has never been tested for long-term safety and that has simultaneously been shown in a myriad of recent studies and reports and data-driven analyses to be less effective than promised. The shot loses steam over the long haul, apparently.
It also causes enlarged hearts in young men.
It also doesn’t do much for children, who haven’t been impacted by the coronavirus, anyway — and yet, now the feds are merrily pumping along, pushing for the needle to be injected into children as young as 5. Oh, and into pregnant women.
Those who question? Those who express concern?
They’re treated to condemnation by the media, the leftists who’ve infiltrated the Democratic Party, the RINOs on the right, the Big Pharma and Big Corporation entities who stand to gain billions of dollars off the very medicines they insist are safe, safe, safe. And let’s not forget: Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Take the shot, Fauci says. Wear the mask, Fauci says. Take the shot and wear two masks, Fauci says.
And we’re all supposed to blindly obey.
“12 states banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates & how they affect healthcare workers,” Becker’s Hospital Review wrote,in an article updated Sept. 17.
Arizona barred the state from forcing people to prove vaccination compliance before entering a business. Arkansas barred businesses from forcing employees to get the vaccine as a condition of employment. Georgia barred state agencies from forcing employees to get the shot. Florida barred businesses from requiring customers to show proof of vaccination — and paved the way for $5,000 fines for violators.
Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah and Texas — all have bans on COVID-19 vaccine mandates in various degrees.
Texas has just made it easy-peasy understandable, though: The bans apply to everyone and anyone. Previously, Abbott barred state government offices from requiring vaccines; his latest move expands that ban to include private businesses and their employees as well as customers.
Wait for it; the White House will not be happy.
Previously, President Biden issued a very nonpresidential piece of snark at Republican governors who threatened to sue over federally imposed vaccine mandates — with this: “Have at it.”
He must still be under the impression he’s fighting Corn Pop.
American citizens are simply tired of being told what to do by an overburdensome, overreaching, unconstitutionally acting bureaucracy and executive branch that treats the people like servants.
Let’s remember, in this country, even presidents are servants. Even the president of the United States is a servant to the people.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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