Perestroika may destroy ya
On This Day In HistoryToday in 1905, 118 years ago: The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the constitutionality of Massachusetts's mandatory smallpox vaccination program in Jacobson v. Massachusetts.
WesDym@onthisday The underlying philosophy of law here, for those curious, is that the first and greatest duty of government is protecting people. ALL individual liberties are lawfully subsidiary to that highest power, the right of the people to be protected from harms they CAN be protected from, to the extent that government is able. No one has an individual right to endanger others, period. Government may lawfully prevent that, if it is able to, even over your personal objections.
Lorin Hochstein 
@wesdym @onthisday The great irony here is that this case was the single citation in the Buck V. Bell decision of 1927, which upheld compulsory sterilization of the "feeble-minded", justified "for the protection and health of the state".
Don't get me wrong, I support mandatory vaccination programs. But it's also important to remember that this power can be, and has been, horribly abused.
@norootcause That seems like an invalid association to me. Without reading the case, I'd be very surprised if the state's duty to protect DIRECTLY justifies ANY act of the state. The specific act in that case is abhorrent, but that's not an argument against the state's general duty to protect the public. The issue there is what constitutes a public threat, and a case from a century go considered that specific act justified on its OWN terms. But that's separate from the duty to project.