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I don't think Ron Paul is a Tea Partier. Be that as it may, I like most of the Tea Party general principles but despise their reactionary, shallow thinking and refusal to negotiate.
The trouble with the Tea Party is that many of its principles are untenable in practice.
"Every man a king" is a fine sentiment when the Home Owners' Association complains about the old beat-up Ford out in your front yard, or when the evening news touts some new expert who knows just how many vitamins you
really needs. Its corollary -- that a body has nobody to blame for his misfortunes but himself -- is a wonderful purgative when we encounter sensational news of welfare cheats. The idea that we are taxed too much already sounds especially good as politicians throw barbs at Social Security, and when we see Congress engage in all sorts of petty antics while policy remains in doubt.
But the truth is, most parents don't know enough to educate their children at home, and the majority that want to do it are worried more about the possibility that public school will turn their children into liberals or libertines rather than make them stupid. The principle that every man should sink or swim on his own, or that charity should be a private thing, ignores the fact that welfare was established precisely because the elderly had proven unable to save enough to keep themselves solvent after their working years ended. And, if we are taxed too much, then the problem is that we have tended to expect too much. Even speaking purely in economic terms, we now know that businesses tend to sit on their money supply when times are tight, whereas governments usually spend. How, then, can we talk about putting money back into our businesses when the objective is to have them pay that money out to new hires? The government is the largest single contractor for goods and services -- the largest single buyer on the market. In his own book, Rick Perry famously fumbles his way through the Great Depression, complaining that times changed for the better only after FDR "unleashed the private sector" to create new jobs. But the mechanism was government contracts for military stores, and the man to blame was Hirohito.
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The federal government should not impose requirements for STD vaccinations. Maybe mandating vaccinations for some air-born diseases would be okay, but it makes more sense to me to allow the choice but restrict access to public buildings (say, schools) to the those who have refused vaccination.
Think of it this way: what is the exchange rate between personal choice and human lives? Obviously it's not worth establishing a totalitarian dictatorship to save one life, nor to allow the extinction of the rest of humanity in order to protect the rights of one person. Somewhere between those ridiculous extremes is the right place to draw the line. Maybe you think that line allows for a this many people to be vaccinated against their will to save that many lives, or maybe not. If you can't prove it, shouldn't you respect the other guy's view, too?
Young people have sex, and in large numbers. I have seen no compelling evidence that vaccination is dangerous or detrimental. The theoretical proposition that an individual loses much fundamental freedom by being compelled to make an appointment with his doctor for a brief, potentially healthful procedure is, on the face of it, absurd.
But I suppose this boils down to how one wishes to think about government. Is the purpose of coming together and making laws to protect the individual's right to do anything, at any time, so long as it does not harm anybody else, or to promote a more productive society? Those two impulses are necessarily at odds.
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No, but they ought to operate as if industrial production was a top priority and that too numerous or too difficult of regulations impede that production.
What leads you to believe that federal regulatory agencies are interested in burdening businesses unnecessarily? Certainly OSHA should not favor efficiency and production above reasonable life safety, however.
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I would support widespread homeschooling with periodic standardized testing at a testing center. I like options, and results matter more to me than method.
The value of public schooling is not only that it ensures the quality of teachers, but also that it provides meaningful social interaction and allows a more efficient delivery of educational resources.
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I don't think there'd be a lot of difference in the decisions they make. If, however, you want to legally challenge a decision they've made, you have a better chance of reversing the decision of an agent of an insurance company than an agent of the United States Federal Government. Of course, neither gives you the kind of control over your own life that actually having money gives you, a situation that becomes less common when people on the margin have to pay for others' health insurance, too.
An individual, acting alone, is unlikely to amass the kind of money that they would require in the event of a catastrophic injury or illness. Hence, insurance. A similar argument can be made with respect to seatbelts: they serve a public good by reducing the likelihood of serious injury or death, and costing society one of its members.
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Bachmann was specifically talking about HPV vaccine. HPV is a sexually transmitted disease. It cannot be passed by sharing a classroom or a mouth-to-mouth kiss or sitting on a dirty toilet seat. It can only be passed by sex or childbirth. Vaccinating girls as young as 9 for it has far less of a public health defense than vaccinations of children for airborne diseases.
Just keep ranting and trolling. Don't worry about reading comprehension.
Bachmann quite clearly believes that the government should not require anybody to get any vaccinations at any time. I suspect that she makes an especially impassioned stand on the issue of STD's, because they could be linked to an uncomfortable assumption about the frequency of sexual activity among young people. I had one co-worker assure me that widespread availability of the STD would only promote greater sexual folly, since unvaccinated young women might be less likely to have sex if they knew they could get cancer.
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Of course folks can refuse the injection. That's not an issue, is it?
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