Just a few hundred years ago, there were only three kinds of relationships between one culture and another; the conquerors, the conquered, and those engaged in war to determine which would be which. Reliably, the conquerors enslaved the conquered.
The greatest leap forward in civilization was the widespread recognition that slavery was wrong and thus was formed the concept of release from bondage and this was called freedom.
Absolutely nobody in this process envisioned a time when this freedom should be expanded to the credo that we should all be free to do whatever we want not matter who gets hurt. In fact, everybody I know is familiar with the parable that ends, “Your rights end where my nose begins.” And if you are not, I bet you can figure it out. Good grief, if the popular definitions of freedom expand any further, we will have come full circle to the freedom to own slaves.
Enough with the right to endanger your neighbors by not getting a measles shot and spreading this disease far and wide. The rumors of dire side effects have all been debunked as junk science of the “everybody with cancer has eaten carrots so carrots cause cancer” variety, and the rantings of Rand Paul are no more that his usual grasping for a constituency in the lunatic fringe.
You don’t have the right to kill my child in the exercise of your freedom. Get the shot.
Harold R. Pettus
Everett
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