I guess my post sounded more personal than I intended.
If you don't find it noteworthy, why did you come into the thread and post a response? I think it's a disturbing, authoritarian development and is a degradation of the civil liberties of Austria's people, and is another worrying development in State violence in the name of Covid.
Probably for the same readon you felt the need to post it.
What can I say?
I posted it because it's a disturbing development. But you don't think it's a disturbing development. So the reasons cannot possibly be the same.
I think you'll find that the individuals that comprised the Austrian government in the 1930s are dead - unless you think a country's character and spirit cannot move on after nearly a century?
Here in the modern world more and more freedoms come into conflict with other freedoms. That's why governments have to decide which freedoms to prioritize. You can't have everything.
Governments who believe they have the right to force medical procedures on their populations--and the populace that supports it (if they do - I don't know if a majority of Austrians support it)--are the problem.
You felt the need to express your opinion on this action, as did I. So, once again, you are mistaken.
In this situation, I suspect the Austrian government came to the conclusion that mandatory vaccination is a better outcome than upholding your view of a civil liberty.
The problem of governments mandating medical procedures on their adult citizens.
No: you felt your need to express your opinion on my OP.
You don't say.
It is entirely possible that the Austrian government (and governments all over the world) has been gripped by the same fever that swept the US after 9/11 and resulted in the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act, if my memory serves me correctly, was widely condemned by the left back then, for its valuing of safety over liberty.
What about the problems caused by letting people run amok, spreading disease? Damaging the economy, our social lives, our health care system...
You are a terrible mind-reader. You are mistaken.
And you feel this "whataboutism" is relevant because .......?
No one used the term "Principled" as a pejorative, so what do you think you are responding to?
What about them? You appear to be under the impression that unvaccinated=diseased. It does not.
I can see this conversation is not going to be productive if you think forcing a medical procedure on an adult is a 'dumbass' freedom.
Austrians don't have even that option. It's 'you are not even allowed to stay at home, you must get vaxxed'.
Even the article Guardian acknowledged that mandatory vaccinations was previously unthinkable. It seems not only is it now thinkable, if the responses on this board are anything to go by, it is unremarkable and even a good idea.
I didn't read your mind. I observed your actions.
I don't feel a whataboutism is relevant. I think that this wholesale embrace of government authoritarianism is a predictable response in times of crisis. Back then, it was about terrorism. This time, it's about COVID.
I'm responding to you, when you called implementing a principle "kneejerk".
The only way to know intent is to read minds. You came to the wrong conclusion.
If you don't think a whataboutism is relevant, then why bring one up?
Your response is based on a straw man driven by a combination of a lack of reading comprehension and reasoning. People of principle are perfectly capable of apply the principle of "the rule of reason:" to their ethics or principles thereby eschewing kneejerk defenses of a misplaced application of a principle.
Yet you made the claim we had the same intent in writing on this thread in post #30. Or are you retracting that claim?
I didn't.
I have never heard of "the rule of reason", and when I google it, I get information about US antitrust law. I don't think that's what you meant, so I assume this is language you have invented in this post, and you expected me to comprehend the meaning without explanation. I don't think that's fair.
Of course you did - you brought up the Patriot Act and the left's response to it. Really, if you are not going to pay attention to your own content, why should anyone else?
I find it out that you feel expecting people to understand the English language is unfair. While the "rule of reason" has a specific application and history to US antitrust law, it is also a general principle that means rules or principles are subject to the use of reason depending on the facts of the situation.
I think it is reasonable for any gov't to enforce a legal mandate in a reasonable and rational manner. I would expect the enforcement mechanism in this case is a forced vaccination.
Yes, I brought up the Patriot Act. No, it wasn't a 'whataboutism'. It was to illustrate that people accept authoritarian actions because of their fear.
I've never heard it used like that, or even heard the phrase at all before today. Indeed, my further google searches uncovers only its use as a test of antitrust law. So yes, I do feel it is unfair of you to expect me to understand a phrase that you either made up with a definition peculiar to you, or is not in common use in the US or anywhere else in the English-speaking world, and that you mock me for failing to understand.
That does seem to me to be the next logical step: physically enforced vaccinations. I'm alarmed, however, that for some people, the ease with which this idea has gone from unthinkable to desirable.
