Posted on by Californiacontrarian

Liberty vs. Safety

One of my favorite sayings is from Ben Franklin, who said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Just this week the Supreme Court chose ‘liberty’ when it struck down Biden’s vaccine mandate. This choice between liberty and safety is the overwhelming categorical dispute in today’s Covid world, not only in the U.S. but in what I had thought were “free” countries. 

In Australia they have what amounts to Covid concentration camps, and now there is continuing hub-bub and vacillation concerning Novak Djokovic’s visa and his vaccination status in light of his recent documented Covid infection.

Similar things are happening in Canada … which I had always considered a free country. However, a few things that I recently read is doing a lot to destroy that apparent myth. A recent headline from the BBC:

“Canada: Unvaccinated father loses right to see his child”

From that article:

“A Canadian father who has not been vaccinated against Covid has temporarily lost the right to see his 12-year-old child.

A judge ruled his visits would not be in the child’s “best interest”.

It followed a request by the father to extend his visiting time during the holidays. The judgement is the first depriving a parent of access rights on immunisation grounds. The judge’s decision, made at the end of last monthin Quebec province, suspends the father’s visitation rights until February, unless he decides to get vaccinated.

The judge said it was not “in the child’s best interest to have contact with their father” due to the recent increase in Covid cases in French-speaking Quebec.”

Also from Canada … from True North:

“A young Kelowna family says it is being evicted from Ronald McDonald House (RMH) in Vancouver where their 4-year-old son is fighting leukemia because they don’t have COVID shots.

The notice, signed by Senior Director of Family Services Leslie Louie, adds that families already staying at RMH have until Jan. 31 to get their first COVID shot.

The father, Austin Ferguson in a seven-minute-long video posted to Facebook. In the video, he tells RMH staff that the COVID shots do not stop transmission and that his family’s eviction was an affront to the country’s national anthem.

In the Facebook video, Furgason tells RMH staff that his family has all their other immunizations but decided not to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Furgason reiterates that his family are not “anti-vaxxers” and that he is most concerned about the safety of the recently approved vaccine for children.”

Wow! Unless one lives in the made-up world of U.S. Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, just about everyone realizes the extremely small risk that Covid poses to children. I have to assume that that this small risk is no different in Canada. Apparently that Canadian judge and the Senior Director of Family Services, Leslie Louie, are not aware of the pertinent prudent saying of Ben Franklin as they stepped on the father’s visitation rights as well as the Furgason’s family’s rights in order to insure some non identifiable  concept (safety?).

[It is probably safe to assume that Canadians have not read The Keneally Chronicles by yours truly, because in that book, retired SCOTUS Anthony Keneally quotes this same Ben Franklin saying many times.]

1/15/22

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