Usually, we live our daily lives not having to make immobilizing decisions that sever aspects of who we are in any fundamental way.  Typically, we wake up, have something to eat, go to work, handle occupational challenges presented to us and eventually allow some leisure time.  But a demand to choose between two or more features that relate to a healthy, fully functioning sense of self is not usually something we come across.

Since the Left is well known for avoiding debate, well-established data, and reasoned argument, it comes as no surprise that the weapon of force is one of its primary tools to supplant the individual sovereignty of free-minded people.   And with the opportunity for extended power that COVID has presented, a number of tyrannical leftists have forced a choice upon workers: get vaxxed or get axed.  You will either get injected with an untested gene-therapy drug (they call a vaccine), or you’re fired!  For the leftist, coercion is the ticket.

Like Zofia Zowistowski’s diabolical choice presented to her upon arrival in Auschwitz in the movie Sophie’s Choice, to choose one of her two children to either live or die, workers have had to choose to either go against their own body autonomy/cost-benefit analysis and their livelihood, the benefits of which financially supports that body, as well as the nurtured well-being of one’s entire family.  It’s not exactly Sophie’s choice, but it is no less diabolical as it forces a decision that splits the self, figuratively speaking.

This week, in the spirit of former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, newly elected Mayor Eric Adams fired more than 1,400 government workers who chose not to be vaccinated.  The axed workers included 914 Department of Education workers along with 36 NY Police personnel and 25 Fire Department workers.  The total number of fired government workers dropped from an estimated 4,000 last week.  Obviously, the coercion had its wicked effect.  In another recent example, General Motors Canada announced that its workers had until December 12, 2021 to get two doses of the government-approved jab, the failure of which would result in termination leave and, ultimately, termination of employment early this year. 

These are just two of several examples that can be sited of a pernicious attempt to extort workers to yield to those in power who demand that one relinquish one’s right to make medical decisions without duress.  The insistence to vax or get axed flies in the face of the Nuremburg Code which states in part that “the person involved should be situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion.”  To choose between one’s desire not to be jabbed or get fired is most certainly a case of duress.  It’s hardly a free choice, as it forces one to consider losing one’s livelihood and all the productive and remunerative effects it brings for oneself and family.  Rather, it is an ultimatum.   It’s not like a choice between the purchase of two automobiles or what to do Saturday night.  It’s a choice that can in fact severely limit or even end your ability to buy a car or go out Saturday night.  

But there is yet more to this disgraceful selection beyond monetary comfort or convenience.  The choice creates a severe internal conflict insofar as it includes my having to consider the indignity of having to decide against my own sense of who I am and what I think is good for me.  If I decide that I do not want an experimental, irreversible injection with a death rate of a mere 0.26% that even the CDC admitted in the summer of 2021 does not stop infection or transmission, so be it.  That being the case, why mandate the gene therapy injection at all? As an American citizen who upholds the cherished American values of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, I should not have to be degraded to relinquish my personal choice or livelihood.  After all, the mind and body in question does not belong to a politician.  In the present case it belongs to the employee and no one else. 

As a teacher I have seen several of my colleagues who felt they had no choice but to succumb to the force of the jab, notwithstanding their strong desire not to be injected.  The choice presented to them was then and remains today an unethical, unconscionable, and disgraceful ultimatum.  Principles like dignity, integrity, self-respect, and honor are gifts we give ourselves.  They cannot be handed to you.  They remain internally nurtured and are part of what makes us individuals.  This we must protect as freedom-loving Americans. 

Hopefully now, the protesting Canadian truckers, American truckers, and truckers around the world will continue to sound the alarm that the majority of the world's people are through with the mandates, lockdowns, and interruptions of their lives and wish instead to remain whole, undivided, and free.

Victor Fernandez is a former Logic/Philosophy of Science adjunct and retired math teacher

Image: Pixabay