Stanford Archives - Dr. Rich Swier

The very notion of republican self-governance, which has been a core tenet of Western civilization since the demise of the great monarchs of Europe, depends upon the willingness of citizens to debate and deliberate the most pressing issues of society. Sadly, high-profile recent examples, from the tony terrain of Stanford University all the way to the raucous streets of Tel Aviv, Israel, underscore the extent to which Western societies have given up on reasoned deliberation and capitulated to mobocracy. Where this civilizational decline ultimately ends is anyone’s guess.

Earlier this month, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was relentlessly heckled and successfully shouted down by a frothing mob of mini-Robespierre jackals who call themselves Stanford Law School students. The mob was simultaneously juvenile and outright vile, with one student unconscionably yelling to the esteemed jurist, “We hope your daughters get raped!” Even more galling, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach finally rose up upon the judge’s plea to restore order … and, in preprepared remarks, sided with the protesters and ludicrously asked whether the “juice” (of Judge Duncan’s planned remarks) was worth the “squeeze” of the alleged “harm” to the pampered brat students that Duncan’s mere presence caused. (Steinbach has since been placed on administrative leave by Dean Jenny Martinez, although the culpable students have tragically escaped thus far with impunity.)

Earlier this week in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose conservative governing coalition has for months been pushing a set of anodyne, sorely needed and long-overdue reforms to the unaccountable and almighty Israeli Supreme Court, agreed to pause his legislative push amidst unprecedented pushback and widespread societal meltdown. The at-times hundreds of thousands of rioters in the streets, who blocked highways and tracked down and physically intimidated leading pro-reform legislators and even Netanyahu’s wife, had reached a debilitating fever pitch. A disturbing number of Israel Defense Forces reservists had reneged upon their military duties. Powerful unions had successfully temporarily grounded all departing flights from Ben Gurion International Airport. Venture capitalists had pulled billions of U.S. dollars’ worth of investment out of Israel’s thriving high-tech sector. All this, despite the left-wing opposition categorically refusing to sit down and negotiate in good faith on the judicial reform legislation.

At Stanford Law School, Judge Duncan’s struggle session resulted in a heckler’s veto outright precluding civil colloquy and the legitimate contestation of ideas. The tyranny of an emotive mob, in short, won the day. In Israel, foes of the judicial reform rebuffed direct political engagement, preferring instead to shriek “authoritarianism!” at the top of their lungs and gin up international incitement — indeed, an attempted color revolution — against the Netanyahu government. The tyranny of an emotive mob, in short, yet again won the day (at least for now).

An old lawyer maxim goes: “If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table.” Left-wing activists increasingly find neither the facts nor the law on their side, but they have certainly become proficient at pounding the table.

There is nothing good that can possibly come from a civilization that, far from merely recognizing reason as “the slave of the passions” as per Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, completely sacrifices any semblance of reason and civil discourse at the altar of wokeness and the crass flexing of raw power. The rot that we see unfolding, from Palo Alto to Tel Aviv and innumerable places in between, represents the triumph of animalistic, reflexive emotionalism over the distinctly human capacity to engage in logical deliberation in pursuit of that most anachronistic of concepts, the very invocation of which hearkens back to a bygone era: truth. Mobocracy, which James Madison warned against in The Federalist No. 10 and which Abraham Lincoln so powerfully decried in his 1838 Lyceum Address, was supposed to be a thing of the past — not truth.

In fairness to Stanford Law School, Dean Martinez’s post-incident letter was generally sound and even admirable, with the notable exception of its cowardly reluctance to punish the underlying student miscreants. And over in Israel, it remains to be seen what kind of compromise Prime Minister Netanyahu might still be able to negotiate with the opposition during this legislative pause. Indeed, Western civilization may still have some fight left in it. But it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the prospects at the moment appear pretty bleak.

AUTHOR

JOSH HAMMER

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An abundance of scientific data undermine justifications for COVID vaccination mandates, which violate long-standing principles of bodily autonomy and individual rights.

As one-size-fits-all COVID vaccine mandates sweep government, academia, and corporate America, new data are emerging that undermine the public health justifications for these policies. Studies from multiple countries now indicate that vaccination alone is less effective than the acquired immunity many already possess and unable to prevent transmission in the medium-to-long term.

Since the pandemic began, more than 100 million Americans have recovered from the virus. Many are workers deemed “essential” just last year. While the government paid others to sit at home, essential workers were required to continue working, exposing themselves to the coronavirus in a pre-vaccine world.

One of these individuals is my friend, Adam, an occupational therapist and rehabilitation director treating patients at a small nursing home in Aroostook County, Maine. He never worked from home. His patients needed him there in person. Like many healthcare workers on the frontlines, Adam was infected by the coronavirus while on the job, stayed home until he tested negative, and then went back to work.

As far as COVID is concerned, Adam is among the safest people in America to be around. Multiple studies (including one out of Israel that has received global attention) now indicate that those who have recovered from infection possess a natural immunity more robust than what current vaccines provide. Further, three epidemiologists at Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford have specifically recommended in the Great Barrington Declaration (now co-signed by nearly 15,000 medical and public health scientists, as well as 44,000 medical practitioners) that “nursing homes should use staff with acquired immunity” to protect patients.

So why have both President Joe Biden and Governor Janet Mills (D-ME) issued mandates threatening Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to all healthcare providers unless they fire people like Adam? Mandates that make no exception for those with demonstrated acquired immunity make little sense for public health.

Additionally, in light of recent studies and documented “breakthrough infections,” the public health basis for mandatory vaccination is increasingly shaky for even those without any degree of natural immunity.

During my four years as Senate Chairman for Maine’s Health and Human Services Committee, mandatory vaccination policies in schools were a regular source of heated debate. The arguments for robust enforcement often rested on the need for “herd immunity”—the point at which one person transmits a virus to one or fewer people due to pre-existing immunity within a population.

Before the advent of vaccination, herd immunity relied on the development of natural immunity through widespread exposure to a virus. Since vaccination became common, many viruses once plaguing society are now virtually eradicated. To maintain herd immunity for subsequent generations and prevent the return of our old viral enemies, widespread vaccination is widely regarded as essential. For COVID vaccination, however, this does not appear to be the case.

According to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine who studies epidemiology at Stanford University, recent studies indicate that the mRNA vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer do not contribute to herd immunity.

Just out: A wide-ranging conversation between me and @ThomasEWoods on the southern summer case spike, herd immunity, what the vax can and can't do, and why mandates are bad for public health.https://t.co/76b8lTAkJV

— Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) September 19, 2021

During a September 2021 interview with New York Times best-selling author Tom Woods, Bhattacharya, one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, cited a study from Qatar with important findings on vaccine effectiveness. While vaccinated individuals were up to 95 percent safer from severe disease six months after vaccination, protection against infection and transmission was fleeting. Immunity began to diminish after five weeks. At 20 weeks, the vaccinated were as likely to become infected and transmit the virus as those unvaccinated.

This failure to confer a lasting immunity that protects the public does not negate the demonstrated positive effects for the individual. Battacharya hails the vaccine as “a wonderful achievement” that has “protected so many people from severe outcomes of the disease.” He credits the vaccine with aiding his own recovery from a COVID infection and strongly recommends it to others, especially the “older and vulnerable.”

“It’s better to have the vaccines first and then get the disease than the other way around,” he says.

At the same time, Bhattacharya concludes that, without contributing to herd immunity, COVID vaccination is a matter of personal health, not public health. As the benefits rest primarily with the individual, not society, government officials have no greater moral authority to prescribe vaccination than they do to prescribe chemotherapy. These are decisions for the individual to decide in consultation with their own physician.

Unlike pre-existing requirements in schools for traditional vaccinations, existing data undermines herd immunity justifications for universal COVID vaccination mandates. Further, these mandates push many with robust acquired immunity out of the workplace and society to the detriment of public health, increasing the likelihood of transmission to the vulnerable.

Mandatory COVID vaccination oversteps the bounds of public health, violating long-standing Western principles of bodily autonomy and individual rights. Lacking even the clear positive externalities often used to justify past vaccination requirements, these mandates should be opposed at all levels of policymaking.

COLUMN BY

Eric Brakey

Eric Brakey is the senior spokesperson for Young Americans for Liberty. As a state senator from 2014 to 2018, Brakey served as senate chairman for the Maine Health and Human Services Committee.

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JOSH HAMMER

Eric Brakey