Why Jim Jordan should avoid fights over what's 'un-American'

[babylonsister]

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-jim-jordan-should-avoid-fights-over-what-s-un-n1278683

Why Jim Jordan should avoid fights over what's 'un-American'
To hear Jordan tell it, "real" Americans believe that vaccine mandates are at odds with our national traditions, even when history proves otherwise.
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Sept. 8, 2021, 9:20 AM EDT
By Steve Benen


Republican Rep. Jim Jordan has earned a reputation as a highly controversial politician, though I was a little surprised to see him cause a stir this week with a short tweet. As The Washington Post reported:

At a time when the delta variant's summer surge has renewed the nation's divisions over coronavirus vaccines, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) on Monday said mandates enforcing vaccination do not reflect what it means to be American. 'Vaccine mandates are un-American,' Jordan tweeted.

At this point, we could point to the American tradition and note that George Washington, among others, embraced mandatory inoculations. Indeed, by some measures, the United States might very well have lost the Revolutionary War were it not for a policy that Jordan apparently considers "un-American."

We could also point to many examples throughout American history in which key societal institutions — including public schools and the U.S. military — embraced vaccine mandates as a matter of course. Ohio State required vaccinations for students while Jordan was a coach there, and he didn't seem to care at the time.

We could also note that if we're really going to have a conversation about what is and isn't "un-American," we should probably discuss those who supported efforts to overturn the results of an American presidential election because a group of extremists didn't like voters' judgment. I suspect the Ohio congressman may not like where that conversation ends up.

more...

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/why-jim-jordan-should-avoid-fights-over-what-s-un-n1278683

[KPN]

1. Asshole ... that's all.

[genxlib]

2. Ohio State still requires them

Including the Covid-19 vaccine as soon as the FDA approved it.

That made my daughter very happy.

[Moostache]

3. In all honesty, we're so far past the point of mandatory vaccination for social participation...

Enough is enough with the reticent and foolish and political hacks looking for attention...

WE - the majority of the people of the United States of America - have the right to establish rules for participation in the social fabric of the nation when it comes to communicable diseases and viral outbreaks, period.

Anyone not wishing to comply can still be "free" to choose their own path, but they then own the consequences of that decision - THEY do, NOT society.

Don't want vaccines?
Fine, stay home and whine about your lot in life with your Q-freaks and Facebook groups questioning the physical and mental acuity of the current POTUS.

Don't want you kids' vaccinated?
Fine, keep them home, isolated for other children and home schooled.
(BTW - you would also be sentencing them to becoming woefully unprepared for the future, but hey "freedumb" rings, amirite?

I could on for days, but why bother? I have run out of empathy for the unvaccinated and I have no use for their continued bullshit. It is past time to simply tell them to sit down and shut the fuck up or go back in their houses and grouse about it in there...fuck these people already.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. How Crude Smallpox Inoculations Helped George Washington Win the War

I love history. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it

Link to tweet

When George Washington took command of the Continental Army in 1775, America was fighting a war on two fronts: one for independence from the British, and a second for survival against smallpox. Because Washington knew the ravages of the disease firsthand, he understood that the smallpox virus, then an invisible enemy, could cripple his army and end the war before it began.

That’s why Washington eventually made the bold decision to inoculate all American troops who had never been sickened with smallpox at a time when inoculation was a crude and often deadly process. His gamble paid off. The measure staved off smallpox long enough to win a years-long fight with the British. In the process, Washington pulled off the first massive, state-funded immunization campaign in American history......

By the following winter, Washington and his troops were camped in Morristown, New Jersey, where the threat of smallpox was as dire as ever. America’s stoic general waffled back and forth on whether to inoculate or not, even making the mass inoculation order and then rescinding it. Finally, on February 5, 1777, he made the call in a letter to John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress.

“The small pox has made such Head in every Quarter that I find it impossible to keep it from spreading thro’ the whole Army in the natural way. I have therefore determined, not only to innoculate all the Troops now here, that have not had it, but shall order Docr. Shippen to innoculate the Recruits as fast as they come in to Philadelphia.”

Fenn says that inoculating all troops without natural smallpox immunity was a daunting task. First, medical personnel had to examine each individual to determine if they had contracted the disease in the past, then they conducted the risky variolation procedure, followed by a month-long recovery process attended by teams of nurses.

Meanwhile, this entire process—the first of its kind and scale—had to be conducted in total secrecy. If the British caught wind that large numbers of American soldiers were laid up in bed with smallpox, it could be the end.