These Small Victories for Individual Rights Light the Way Back to Freedom

(Psst: The FTC wants me to remind you that this website contains affiliate links. That means if you make a purchase from a link you click on, I might receive a small commission. This does not increase the price you'll pay for that item nor does it decrease the awesomeness of the item. ~ Daisy)

Most of us have had a hell of a past two years. Between inflation, job uncertainty, riots (depending on where you live), and the stress and mental health issues that come along with all those things, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. But right now, I think it’s time to look at some small, underreported victories for individual rights.

Let me say first that this article is not about vaccination itself. I can see no problems with informed, consenting adults trying out new medical treatments. My big issues are the sweeping mandates and the destruction of privacy regarding medical decisions. I had family visit in California recently, and they had to present their vaccination verification to enter any building in LA. In Denver, many venues are starting to require proof of vaccination upon entry. 

What’s next?

Are we going to have to start getting weighed and proving we aren’t obese because obesity correlates with all kinds of other diseases? (The OP posted a satirical article about just this topic recently.) Are we going to have to reveal our sexual histories? When we stop viewing each other as brothers and sisters of Mother Earth and start judging each other primarily on how sick we think another person will make us, we are Othering. And Daisy’s written about where that leads.

I don’t want to speculate too wildly about the CDC’s endgame here. However, I will point out on December 2, 2020, Dr. Fauci said in an interview with Fox News that a 70% fully vaccinated population would lead to herd immunity. A few weeks later, he said herd immunity would require 85 to 90%, then admitted he really has no idea what it would take to achieve herd immunity.

But we’ve gone from “Well, let’s get a lot of people vaccinated” to “Everyone needs a shot. If you protest, you lose your job.” I know that vaccines are wildly profitable for pharmaceutical companies. And I know that pharmaceutical companies donate generously to both political parties. Draw your own conclusions.

Regardless of motive, the push is on.

Regardless of motive, right now, there is an incredible amount of power and money pushing to get every American, of every health condition and religious belief, vaccinated. While many scoffed about the very idea of these kinds of manipulations just a year ago, it’s all happening. The overwhelming majority of working adults are being forced to choose between their careers and their bodily autonomy. Many parents (myself included) are deeply concerned about coming mandates for schools and sports.

Fortunately, this push to override perfectly reasonable concerns about new medical technology is not going quite as smoothly as some might have hoped.

  • On November 1, a Cook County judge granted Chicago’s Police Department a small reprieve in their battle against vaccine mandates.  Chicago PD obtained a temporary restraining order against the City of Chicago. The city cannot enforce any mandates until they complete arbitration with the police union.
  • In Los Angeles County, Sheriff Villanueva has said in press conferences that he will not enforce the County’s reporting mandates because he is already short-handed, which would only worsen staffing problems.

And it isn’t just police departments that are pushing back.

Police departments aren’t the only ones pushing back against the oppressive federal mandates. The private sector has had a lot to say about the situation as well.

  • Angela Phillips, the CEO of the Phillips Manufacturing and Tower Company, wrote an excellent letter detailing the mandate’s effect on her company of 104 employees. In a nutshell, she is challenging OSHA’s vaccine mandate in court. Of her 104 employees, 17 are willing to lose their jobs rather than be vaccinated, and the cost to retrain skilled laborers would be prohibitive, assuming she could even find skilled workers right now.
  • Qualified airline pilots aren’t easy to replace either. According to the pilots, Southwest’s cancellation of 27% of their flights on October 10, while officially blamed on the weather, had more to do with its vaccination reporting policies.
  • Delta Airlines, by contrast, refused to enforce a mandate and sports a +90% vaccination rate anyway, proving that mandates are often superfluous to meet a vaccination rate that Fauci claimed in December 2020 would lead us to herd immunity.
  • And finally, on November 6, a three-judge panel ruled that the federal order mandating that all companies with more than 100 employees require vaccination was unconstitutional. 

While this declaration of unconstitutionality applies to private employers in general, health care workers receive different treatment. They do not have the option of regular testing. Faced with the likelihood of a mass exodus of health care employees, the attorneys general of ten states (Missouri, Nebraska, Alaska, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Wyoming, and New Hampshire) sued President Biden on November 10.

Among other things, this coalition of attorneys general is pointing out that the mandate is unconstitutional because compulsory vaccination power has always rested with the states.  

Pushback is occurring in other countries, as well

For example, in Canada, both Quebec and Ontario were forced to rescind their vaccine mandates for healthcare workers. Too many workers threatened to quit, and the government had to back down.  

In Britain, officials estimate they are about to lose 123,000 health care workers to their reporting requirements. England alone has had 140,000 people on a waitlist for surgeries such as knee and hip replacements. Losing over 100,000 staff will be disastrous. 

So far, England and Northern Ireland are not backing down. But Wales and Scotland have announced that they will not be mandating vaccination for health care workers.

Who are the ones fighting the mandates the hardest?

It’s no coincidence that the workers who never stopped during the pandemic are the ones fighting the mandates the hardest, and it’s not out of selfishness.

Police officers, pilots, and nurses were exposed to germs that the laptop class has been avoiding for the past two years. Most of them have already had Covid and have developed natural immunity. (Which proves to be more robust and durable than any of the vaccines on the market.) They already risked their necks with the disease, doing their jobs they can not do from home. Why should they now have to take chances with a scantily-tested vaccine that will not benefit them in any way?

These workers are the ones we depend on the most to keep us alive

During the strictest part of the lockdown, I had to go both to Denver (full of professionals) and up to Greeley (primarily oil and gas and agricultural services) multiple times. The difference was striking.

Denver was silent. I’ve joked with the other people I know that were out driving during lockdown about how much I miss quarantine traffic. But I wouldn’t want to have lived there. You weren’t allowed to leave your house unless you were walking a dog. The whole city was basically on house arrest.

Greeley, by contrast, looked normal. Except that many of the people driving cattle trucks had children with them because the schools were closed and the working class was stuck bringing their kids to work. Because I mostly homeschool, I was able to take in one child of a friend who works in an industrial warehouse. 

But my friend told me that sometimes her coworkers would have to bring their kids to work with them in a non-climate controlled industrial warehouse. (Which, of course, is totally illegal. But what the heck are people supposed to do?) Children don’t disappear because teachers won’t go to work.

Food doesn’t magically appear on grocery store shelves either

I needed to get animals processed. Animals have to be raised by people like me and processed by people like the good folks at Innovative Foods. So yes, I was out during lockdown, though I didn’t actually catch Covid myself until well after the lockdown was over.  

My goal here is not to inflame class tensions between those who could work and school from home and those who really couldn’t. I am simply pointing out the people that have risked exposure to Covid for almost two years now: those who tend the sick, fly the planes that make the 21st century standard of living what it is and maintain our energy infrastructure. 

Most of them have probably caught it already and are ready to be done with the rules and mandates. People hailed them as heroes in the early part of the pandemic. Now, people are treating them like lab rats.  

Peaceful pushback is spreading.

Fortunately, a peaceful pushback is happening, aided by reasonable lawyers and judges who know that coercive medical treatment is wrong. None of these victories are permanent, and not all of the court cases have gone smoothly.

  • Aaron Kheriaty, a psychiatrist and medical ethicist at the University of California Irvine, challenged UCI’s vaccine mandate in court. He is Covid-recovered, does not see why he should be vaccinated as well, and has sued UCI. So far, the court case has not gone anywhere, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. If anyone can reasonably state the case against mandatory vaccination reporting, it’s a professional medical ethicist.  

And if there’s one thing we can learn here, it’s that peaceful people, maintaining the moral high ground by not getting provoked to violence, can accomplish a lot. The work done by ordinary people daily turns the wheels of civilization. Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi showed us this in the 20th century, and there are some workplaces around the United States where people are starting to realize their own clout.

If you’re looking for more ways to fight back, check out this free book on how to Starve the Beast.

These small victories have brightened my days

I am completely aware that nothing is settled and that the powers that seem hell-bent on getting rid of any kind of personal autonomy have plenty of tricks left. But I think stalling and dragging things out is key for those of us who still value freedom. The Founding Fathers envisioned this nation as one of independent farmers and craftsmen, not technocrats and sheeple.

The more of these cases get tied up in court, the more desperate the authoritarians will become, and the more obvious it will be to the general public what’s going on. I sure don’t know myself.

This may all be temporary, but I will enjoy the moment while it lasts and take comfort in knowing that we are stronger when we fight together.  

What victories for personal liberty have you noted recently? Do you think the pushback will continue? Share your thoughts in the comments.

About Joanna

Joanna has been homeschooling three children since 2012. In 2014, she moved to the High Plains of Colorado. She and her children began a little homestead, gardening and raising chickens for eggs and meat. One animal led to another, and these days they have livestock guardian dogs, chickens, geese, ducks, alpacas, goats, pigs, and one very spoiled cat.

Picture of Joanna Miller

Joanna Miller

Leave a Reply

  • This is a great article! I agree, let’s not inflame tensions or argue the unwinnable argument. FWIW I share your belief in personal freedom. These mandates are totally unnecessary and as some courts have ruled, unconstitutional. Whether or not someone else chooses to be vaccinated is none of my business.

    For the sake of balance however, I’d like to point out that there’s a very long list of mandated vaccines: diptheria, pertussis, smallpox, and TB to name a very few. The alleged link between MMR and autism has long been debunked. Many countries where certain diseases such as malaria are endemic require proof of vaccination to enter. Lastly, this has all happened before. Look up the history of the smallpox vaccine, smallpox being the first disease eliminated via vaccination. I’d post links but don’t want to make work for the mods 😀 This has all happened before, and the human race has lived.

    • With all due respect, those vaccines were researched and tested for years. I am not anti-vax but I do believe we all have the right to say no to an experimental therapy.

      • With respect to both of you, no, those smallpox vaccines were not tested for years. They were developed under much the same circumstances as we have today. According to the history I’ve read, public health officials would pin people down and forcibly vaccinate them.

        I do agree that the mandates are unnecessary, as I said in my original comment. And I honor Johanna’s wish to keep the pro-vs. anti-vax argument out of it. You do you, I’ll do me, and this Othering must stop!

        • @Jayne Yes, I’ve read that NPR article too.

          As for smallpox, people were certainly fined for refusing the vaccine. For example, see Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905). The penalty for refusing the smallpox vaccine was a $5 fine. (That is $157.15 in today’s dollars.)

          And, in some rare cases, such as that police raid on a tenement of Italian immigrants in New York, some people were forcibly vaccinated.

          But the latter was not standard procedure, much less, national policy. So again, no, this has not happened before. Humanity has survived many evils, that hardly justifies them.

        • Smallpox and most of the others were almost wiped out by herd immunity before the vaccine. The CDC website has some charts that show that. Vaccines are about money and control nothing else. The MMR and autism link was only debunked for those who are true believers in the vaccine religion. Those of us who want actual proof are not fooled.

    • Jayne I can appreciate bringing up the point about the history of mandated vaccines, but I think we have to acknowledge that the CVD vax is different. It is “non-sterilizing”, meaning that it does NOT prevent infection or transmission, unlike every other mandated vaccine (MMR, polio, smallpox etc) that kills the virus completely.

      I think it would be more appropriate to describe the CVD vax in a manner similar to the flu SHOT, which is technically a vaccine, but also only moderately effective.

      Calling it a Cov*d shot might take away some of the hostilities around the Vax vs Anti-Vax argument?

    • Those vaccines are only “mandated” for children to attend public schools, and of course, there are medical and religious exemptions. So, no, this has not happened before.

      • Uh no there are not always medical and “religious” exemptions. Until gov tater tot, MS had nary a peep about mandated vaccines. My religious belief is everyone should be vaccinated and not out infecting society. I also support health departments taking a hard line with those who have HIV-Aids, STIs and other communicable diseases. If the disease only killed the covidiot, I’d have no issue with one choosing to die on the hill. Trust me, the almighty dollar will win every time. No, it won’t be a blatant firing for most but disease spreaders will be out the door sooner than later. “Prefer not to say” means not vaccinated.

        • Selena,
          I agree with you 100% about, “If the disease only killed the covidiot,”
          If only all those who got the Big Pharma vaxx and boosters just died, the world would be a better place.
          And, my Pfizer and Moderna stocks are doing so very well!
          I do trust you, the almighty dollar/Big Pharma is winning for my 401K!!!!! Killing it!

          Hey, how do you feel about the 5th, 6th, 22nd booster if it causes various heart conditions and blood clots? Kills babies or children?

        • @Selena Are you sure you want to accuse everyone who isn’t vaccinated of “infecting society”? It’s a false accusation. Do you know what the proper punishment is for a false accuser? That they should suffer the fate that they intended for the accused. To falsely accuse a person of a capital crime is to be guilty of a capital crime. It is to place a death sentence on your own head. Perhaps you should focus your ire on those individuals who are a) infected, b) contagious, and c) out in public, that is, those people who are actually spreading the virus?

  • Always remember, the same Science telling us we have to take the Vaxxine, is the same Science that once told us “4 out of 5 Doctors recommend their patients smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes.”
    The same Pharmaceutical companies and FDA that OK’d Thalidomide, Talwin, Darvocet, DES and a long list of drugs that were OK’d in spite of the known at the time risk of potential side effects. Some of these drugs were on the market for years before they were pulled. Some were pulled within I
    1 to 2 years of release.

  • Newsflash: No amount of an ineffective “vaccine” will ever achieve herd immunity. That’s exactly the situation that is now unfolding.

  • Speaking of fighting back…where have any of the “militias” running around the woods playing soldier all these years, “getting ready” to defend America been? …all wind-up and no pitch.

  • This article showed up just this morning:

    COVID Shots Are the Deadliest ‘Vaccines’ in Medical History, By Dr. Joseph Mercola

    Reprinted here on 22 Nov 2021:
    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/11/joseph-mercola/covid-shots-are-the-deadliest-vaccines-in-medical-history/

    After reading that article, consider following the in depth coverage of the Covid wars on both weekday and weekend articles on NaturalNews.com and LewRockwell.com.

    Consider that the US government has a long pitifully disgusting and dishonest record with mandated vaccines dating back to The Spring of 1918 when the Rockefeller Institute (taking advantage of the US Army’s 1911 introduction of occcasional mandated vaccines program) supplied a poorly tested (in horses) vaccine to Ft. Riley Kansas … and the GI’s immediately began getting sick. The sickness went through two mutations which were way more deadly than the first jab. None of this stopped the Rockefeller Institute from selling that same vaccine to several other countries. With wartime censorship in effect for the media in participating wartime countries, the first media coverage of the sickness showed up in newspapers in Spain. That gave the US government the perfect excuse to lie about the origin of what became the “Spanish Flu.” Worldwide the sickness killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people, including more German soldiers than did combat. After the war Germany sent investigators to the US in the early 1920s to try to learn the origin of the sickness. Our medics admitted to them that “our biological experiments got out of hand.” To this day the US government has maintained that Wilson administration lie of the “Spanish Flu” to cover up that deadly vaccine from the Rockefeller Institute.

    With that history of dishonesty being maintained even today, it would be extremely naive to expect honesty today after that long history of deceit has served their thoroughly corrupt purposes so well.

    –Lewis

  • Florida is leading the way in protecting personal liberty!
    So very proud of our Governor DeSantis.

  • Yes, thousands of passive actions could add up. (One can always hope.) And I think the most important thing is to vote for some centrist candidates that have a chance to get elected and work across the aisle to reach some kind of middle ground. Neither side would be happy but at least we could get some things accomplished as a country and not go broke. (I know there is some concern that voting fraud will occur, but it is harder to do if thousands of people vote the same way.)

    We can also start by being vocal with our legislators when a truly NASTY PIECE OF LEGISLATION comes up. Right now one of those bills is House Bill 4980. It authorizes the Dept of Homeland Security to require that everyone traveling on a plane must be vaccinated against Covid-19 and “for other purposes” (whatever those are…) It looks like the bill covers travel INSIDE the US, as well as OUTSIDE coming in.

    I know you have to watch out for fake news, but it looks like this is an actual bill. Here is the link:
    https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/4980

    I don’t believe every crazy conspiracy theory I read, and I am not especially anti-vax, but this situation is definitely being used by the government to gain an incredible amount of control. We have to stand against this in any small way we can. As a former librarian, I have never seen the level of censorship and propaganda that is happening now. It truly seems sinister.

  • My sister works at a San Antonio hospital & was forced to work helping hundreds of Covid patients. With no protocals yet in place, every single person got covid, including my sister in July 2020. Because of a severe staff shortage, the hospital demanded she get back to work after only 10 days! Seems crazy to think that with zero covid patients now she MUST take the shot or be fired, without consideration of her natural immunity, which is better than the vax.

  • Oklahoma has a bill pending “Senate Bill 1106, also known as the Citizen Health Mandate Protection Act, states that employers, if found liable, would be automatically subject to punitive damages of at least $1 million if they require vaccinations or medicinal treatment programs without first confirming safety-based “publicly available medical testing and documentation.” I think if you want to make medical decisions for large groups of people then something like this is necessary since Big pharma won’t be held accountable for any damage that the shot may cause.

  • You Need More Than Food to Survive
    50-nonfood-stockpile-necessities

    In the event of a long-term disaster, there are non-food essentials that can be vital to your survival and well-being. Make certain you have these 50 non-food stockpile essentials. Sign up for your FREE report and get prepared.

    We respect your privacy.
    >
    Malcare WordPress Security