By Cliff Kincaid
[DISCLAIMER: The opinion in this article is the sole opinion of the author and is not necessarily the opinion of NewsWithViews.com, it’s employees, representatives, or other contributing writers.]
In a bulletin headlined, “It’s Still All About COVID,” the astute observer Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report notes “the prominence of COVID” as the “dominant concern” among voters. She said, “They are frustrated that more than a year later — and with vaccines available to all — we are still battling this virus.” This spells big trouble for both political parties, but especially for Republicans pandering to the anti-vaxxers in their base.
Walter noted, “When asked about how they felt about the state of the country, almost all of them replied with a pessimistic comment. And, that negativity was almost universally centered around issues of the virus and the vaccine.”
Both sides of the political spectrum use the phrase, “My body, my choice,” for their own political purposes. But it’s not your body alone in abortion or disease. In fact, a disease affecting one’s body can influence the fate of a nation.
Hence, General George Washington ordered the Revolutionary Army to get inoculated against smallpox. That sets a precedent for handling the China virus that some Republican conservatives may not like.
The question of vaccine mandates may determine America’s future.
In his 1968 non-fiction blockbuster, The Biological Time Bomb, Gordon Rattray Taylor wrote about the prospect of germ warfare in the context of “undeclared war.” He explained, “In current thinking the best way to wage war is to wage it without your enemy even being aware that it is happening.” He was predicting the use of infectious diseases to cripple a nation. He was predicting the release of the China virus.
China expert Gordon Chang says that, “China is maliciously attacking us, and I don’t take the continued existence of the United States for granted. If we don’t start defending ourselves, it’s possible we will lose our freedom, we will lose our way of life, we will lose our sovereignty, we will lose our country.”
The question is to what extent the state should intervene when more than 660,000 have died from the China virus and the disease keeps spreading.
General Washington was facing a similar challenge
Washington believed that the individual had the “right to choose.” That’s what the revolution was all about. But what if the choice affects the future of a nation?
In the scholarly article about the revolutionary war, “George Washington and the First Mass Military Inoculation,” the authors Amy Lynn Filsinger and Raymond Dwek write that George Washington ordered the inoculation of his military forces against smallpox. Washington had explained that, “Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army . . . we should have more to dread from it, than from the Sword of the Enemy.”
Today’s it’s the China virus.
Sadly, many treat this bioweapon as a cold or flu. If we don’t understand what’s going on in this once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, nothing else matters. This virus can destroy a nation.
We are in the same position as Washington was, but many conservatives fail to grasp that disease is a weapon that can defeat us. Much of the resistance to the vaccines, curiously, comes from those on the right, who might be assumed to be in favor of safeguarding our national security.
The conservative journalist Alex Newman maintains that “the new world order is here, under the guise of keeping people safe from Covid 19.” But keeping the American people safe from Covid is absolutely necessary if the “Great Reset” or a “New world Order” is to be avoided. The American people must defeat the disease and then hold China accountable for what it has done to the world.
General Washington was facing a similar threat.
A 51-page historical paper, “Smallpox in Washington’s Army: Strategic Implications of the Disease during the American Revolutionary War,” was written by Ann M. Becker, who noted that there were religious objections to inoculations, with one clergyman questioning whether such a procedure was a “distrust of God’s overruling care.” One asked, “is not smallpox a judgment of God sent to punish us and humble us for our sins?”
This reminds me of the fanatical religious objections to Trump’s Warp Speed vaccines as the “mark of the beast.”
On a global basis, Nicolau Barquet, MD, and Pere Domingo, MD, wrote about how diseases “greatly affected the development of western civilization,” with the first stages of the decline of the Roman Empire, around AD 180, coinciding “with a large-scale epidemic.”
In March of 2020, as the coronavirus was spreading, I perceived that the virus was China’s revenge on America for President Trump’s trade war. I noted, “The virus has the potential impact to cause a major economic recession and sabotage President Trump’s reelection effort. Health emergencies are being declared around the country as the number of coronavirus cases increase. The interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve is an indication of desperation.”
While freedom of choice is an American value, the SARS-CoV-2 deadly pathogen came out of a Chinese lab and is capable of producing transmissible coronavirus variants that seem to be without end. At this point, we have no idea when the pandemic will end. This is why the voters consulted by Amy Walter of the Cook Political report are so apprehensive.
Conservative personalities such as Tucker Carlson are taking an anti-vaccine approach, even as their own employer requires evidence of vaccination status. His frequent guest, Alex Berenson, screams, “Folks are angry out there. Angry at the lies and the power grab. Angry at being forced to take a vaccine that they know they don’t need and may even hurt them.”
Such rhetoric is divisive and inflammatory and scares away moderates and independents.
In an article, “How Conservatives Must Respond to China and the Virus,” Professor Renato Cristin writes, “Politically dividing ourselves for health reasons would be the biggest nonsense we can do. If we split, we are giving a gift to the left, to the Democrats and to all extremist movements that want to destroy the United States and the entire Western world, and it would also be a gift to Communist China, which caused the epidemic by producing the virus.”
He argues that we must understand the Chinese origin of the virus because of its geostrategic implications.
We should be focused on China’s use of the virus as a weapon and whether we can as a nation survive it.
China Joe Biden is no George Washington. Indeed, former President Trump fulfilled the role of a modern-day George Washington with his Warp Speed vaccines, which have proven to be far superior to the versions produced by the Chinese and the Russians.
Conservatives who argue against vaccine mandates will have to explain why General Washington was wrong when he ordered inoculations for what was to become the U.S. Armed Forces.
Columnist Jeanette Strong notes, “Many of those who refuse vaccinations claim it violates our freedoms for government to require a vaccine. If anyone knew about patriotism and freedom, it was George Washington, the general who won the Revolutionary War. As our first president, he protected our rights. That was Washington’s life work. Washington put his life on the line for our country. He also believed an inoculation mandate was vital for securing our liberty.”
I don’t know if Jeanette Strong is a liberal or a conservative. But her sense of history and logic make sense.
Mandates and boosters seem to be inevitable when faced with a nation-destroying pandemic. If Republicans don’t recognize the stakes, they will lose the support of their fellow citizens and lose their nation.
*Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org
