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Measles Outbreak In NYC
sandbagger writes "New York City may have to deal with a measles problem. New Yorkers are being urged to make sure all household members, including young children, are vaccinated. To date, there have been 16 confirmed cases and four hospitalizations. This follows news from the CDC in December that 2013 saw triple the average number of yearly measles cases. 2014 is off to an even worse start; there have been cases recently in the Boston metropolitan area and more than a dozen in the Bay Area as well. Vaccinations seem to be a victim of their own success — people look around and see no polio or measles and wonder why they should bother. Others repeat bogus claim about vaccines causing autism. How do you think we can get through to the anti-vaxxers?"
Darn right! Refuse to participate in X, and you should have your right to freedom of association, right to free travel, and right to make use of public property abridged!
But why stop with "X = Get Vaccinated"? Let's make X equal "refrain from hate speech" too. After all, that stuff harms minds in much the same way that illnesses can harm the body. Why stop there? There are lots of great ideas!
</sarcasm>
I know ideas like yours are popular, particularly among the sort of crowd you get here, but they are wrong, plain and simple. We only abridge rights inasmuch as they are directly in conflict with others, and until the person is sick, they aren't directly harming anyone by being at those places. In much the same way, hate speech is vile stuff, but until someone starts acting on it we don't take action to deny them their rights. We protect the rights of people that disagree with us and do things we think are utterly moronic so that when the time comes for us to exercise those same rights, those rights will still be intact.
We all know just how stupid these people are being, but the fact is, they have a right to be that stupid. To trot out the tired, old quote from Ben Franklin, "They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." It doesn't just apply to defending against terrorists. It applies here too.