Tag: the common good

Florida and Vaccinations: Balancing the Common Good and Personal Freedom

Last Wednesday, Dr. Josepf Ladapo, Florida’s Surgeon General, together with Governor Ron DeSantis, promised to repeal a half-dozen vaccine mandates controlled by the Florida Department of Health and Governor Ron DeSantis and that the Florida Legislature would work to repeal other vaccinations required by state law such as polio, diphtheria, rubeola, rubella, pertussis, mumps, tetanus and other communicable diseases. I watched Dr. Ladapo give his announcement on television and at first, I was impressed. He said, “Every last one of them [the mandates] is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery. Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God.”

I am a strong believer in individual freedoms, and his message resonated with my beliefs…, at first. Upon further reflection and research, I now believe Dr. Ladapo is making a serious mistake for the following reasons.

  1. Every state in the nation requires children to receive vaccinations before they can attend public school. There needs to be a high rate of compliance in order to guarantee public safety (above 90% to provide “herd immunity” against measles). Nevertheless, states (including Florida) already provide parents the option to apply for a vaccine exemption based on a variety of reasons (religious, philosophical, etc.). These exemption applications are almost always approved. Today, 5.1% of school age children in Florida are exempted from receiving the mandated vaccinations. Far from being “slavery” as Ladapo claims, these vaccination mandates are a reasonable balance between the common good and personal freedom.
  2. Even though he is a medical physician, Dr. Ladapo does not seem to understand his role very well. Most medical doctors do, in fact, tell their patients what they should put in their bodies. Every time a doctor writes out a prescription, the patient has the option to follow or not to follow the physician’s recommendation. (There is an important semantic difference between “should” and “must”. “Should” is usually used when appealing to a person’s conscience. “Must” usually involves laws and potential punishment.)
  3. A helpful parallel can be seen in the issue of drinking alcoholic beverages and driving a car. I am of legal age where I have the freedom to drink alcoholic beverages, even to the point of getting drunk…in my house. I also have the freedom to drive my car on public streets because I have a valid Illinois driver’s license. But I DO NOT have the freedom to drive if I am at the same time under the influence of alcohol. There is a reasonable restriction of my individual freedoms if my abuse of those freedoms present a danger to the common good.
  4. A reputable study from last year showed that infant mortality rates have dropped over the last 50 years and access to vaccines brought those rates 40% lower than they would have been otherwise. Surely Florida, and the rest of the nation, can find a way to balance the common good of vaccine mandates and individual freedoms of exemptions. The current vaccine policy in Florida does NOT to be repealed.

Gerrymandering and the Mess in Texas: Are there any Adults in the Room?

The attempt to change the boundaries of the federal congressional districts in Texas has set off a political firestorm across the nation. At the beginning of each decade, after the national census results are tabulated, a process of redistricting frequently takes place. Given that there is migration within the country, usually from states in the north and northeast to states in the south and southwest, it is common for northern states to lose a congressional district or two, and the receiving states to increase the number of their districts. The goal of redistricting is to maintain a similar number of people in each district (to the best mathematical degree that is possible). This is based on the facts of the census and there is not much controversy at this stage.

Within each state, the boundaries of the congressional districts are also re-drawn in order to guarantee that each district has an equal number of people. This is where gerrymandering enters the picture. In U.S. politics, gerrymandering is “the practice of drawing the boundaries of electoral districts in a way that gives one political party an advantage over its rivals (political or partisan gerrymandering) or that dilutes the voting power of members of racial or ethnic minority groups (racial gerrymandering).” Let’s look at a typical purple state with one million voters in which there is an equal number of Republicans and Democrats (500,000 voters each party). Let’s assume the state has ten congressional districts. “Fair” districts would have roughly 50,000 voters from each party, therefore making each district competitive. Acknowledging that rural voters tend to favor Republicans and urban voters prefer Democrats, one would expect each party to win five districts, or at most six. What might happen if typical gerrymandering occurs? Let’s suppose the boundaries are drawn in such a way that in eight districts, party A has a 60,000-40,000 edge over party B, but in the two remaining districts, party B has a 90,000-10,000 edge. Although in the state, each party receives 500,000 total votes, party A wins 8 districts and party B just 2 districts. Throughout our history, both major parties have taken advantage of this “gerrymandering unfairness”. Democrats have practiced gerrymandering…so have Republicans. Therefore, some states now have laws that require the boundaries to be drawn by non-partisan organizations or approved by the state’s Supreme Court. Even so, there exist questions about fairness. If a political party wins 60% of the vote in a state, should they get 60% of the congressional seats? Or through gerrymandering, should they get 90% of the seats? Today I hear more politicians arguing for partisan gain instead of the common good. Where are the ethical adults in the room?

Here Texas enters the fray. In the midterm elections, the party that does not control the White House generally makes a strong comeback and picks up dozens of seats in the House of Representatives. This spells disaster for Trump whose approval rate is under 40% in most polls and who has an extremely slim majority in both the House and in the Senate. Trump has urged the Texas state legislature to gerrymander their districts in order to give Republicans a pick-up of five congressional seats. There is not even an attempt to hide their partisan goals. The fact that this is 2025 (and not at the beginning of a decade) shows they have no regard for the facts of the 2020 census. This move violates the historical norms of our political redistricting. Democrats in Texas have physically left their state to deny Republicans a quorum. Republicans have countered with legal actions, including calling in the FBI (although no federal laws have been broken). Nationally (and naturally), Democrats have threatened to fight “fire with fire” in blue states (like California and New York) where they can re-shape districts and turn them from Republican to Democrat control. This same tit for tat action is threatened in red states. We might easily descend into political chaos.

Where are the adults in the room who will address this issue with reason and a sense of fairness. When will “the common good” be considered? Will the adults in the room stand up and rise to the occasion?