We’re publishing a guest post today by David Martin Jones and Michael Rainsborough, two professors at King’s College London, disputing the claim, often made by libertarian lockdown enthusiasts, that J.S. Mill would have supported mandatory Covid vaccinations.
In a comment piece in the Telegraph on December 22nd, John Harris makes the moral case for mandatory vaccination in the public interest. Harris might have supported his argument by reference to a number of political and moral theorists who, like Harris, have endorsed forcing people to do things against their will in the name the greater good. Kant springs to mind. So too does Jean Jacques Rousseau who thought that securing the ‘General Will’ might require the recalcitrant to be “forced to be free”.
Curiously, however, Harris co-opts John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859) to support state mandated Covid vaccines. Harris writes: “It is difficult, in view of the urgency of the global Covid pandemic and the immense death toll and burden of the disease, not to conclude that, in Mill’s famous and uncompromising words, the anti-vaxxers are ‘such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act’.”
What Harris seems to mean is that by refusing to get vaccinated, the vaccine refusenik acts in a way to “do harm to others” and consequently such actions must be controlled “by the active interference of mankind”. But would Mill have construed a refusal to get vaccinated an action directly harming others?
Clearly not. In the introduction to his essay, from which Harris quotes selectively, Mill warns against the potentially despotic power the people may exercise in a modern democracy. This tyranny of the majority operates “chiefly through public authorities”. But it can also operate through society collectively acting upon the “separate individuals who compose it”. “Society can and does execute its own mandates” and when it does so in areas “where it ought not to meddle it practises a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression”.
The rational and autonomous individual, Mill maintained, needs protection against “the tyranny of prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose… its own ideas and practises as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them” to fetter and prevent any “development not in harmony with its ways”. One could call this the tyranny of the medical-socialist state.
To guard against this evolving modern despotism, Mill proposed one very simple principle to govern the dealings of government and society with the individual “in the way of compulsion and control”. That simple principle is that the only end for which a government can legitimately interfere “with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self- protection”.
This, then, is the harm principle that Harris seeks to manipulate for collectivist ends. It in fact recognises that the reasonable individual’s own good, either physical or moral, is “not a sufficient warrant for intervention”. The individual “cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so” or because “to do so would be wise, or even right”.
To be sure, such reasons may be good for remonstrating, reasoning, persuading or entreating with the recalcitrant “but not for compelling him”. To justify compulsion “the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to someone else”. In that part which merely concerns him or herself, the anti-vaxxer’s “independence is, of right, absolute”. On this point Mill insists: “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” He continues: “The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way… each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual”.
Harris’s case for compulsory Covid vaccination rests on a highly questionable interpretation of the harm principle: namely, minimising societal distress by seeking to reduce avoidable death, hospitalisations and excessive pressure on the NHS. However, with an infection fatality rate of a little over 0.2% and an average age of death from Covid above the age of 80, the case seems hardly compelling, since the social risk does not deviate all that significantly from most winter flu seasons. The fact that vaccinations do not prevent infection or transmission further reduces the force of the argument.
All individuals, when they step out into the world risk bringing unintentional harm – to themselves and others – whether driving a car, going for a walk, or meeting with friends. Everyday life involves all manner of potential hazards. The point is, though, that an individual’s engagement in the routines of daily life is in, the vast majority of instances, not “calculated to produce evil to someone else”.
Thus, enlisting Mill on the side of compulsion because vaccine refusal might indirectly harm others, on the grounds it places undue pressure on the NHS, conceptually stretches and ultimately undermines Mill’s ‘simple principle’. Mill was a utilitarian and a moral consequentialist. He also lived in a laissez faire age. There was no NHS in Mill’s day. If there had been, he would quite possibly have argued that if a responsible adult refused the vaccination the NHS offered to prevent an infectious disease, the individual would either forego any right to NHS treatment or be required to pay the cost of his care. Actions, after all, have consequences.
As numerous libertarian commentators on Mill have pointed out, the distinction between self-regarding and other regarding actions is paramount. Simplifying the distinction, Karl Popper, whom Harris quotes, observed “my freedom to swing my arm stops at your nose”. The point, of course, is that it is my arm and I have a sovereign right over whether I choose to have it vaccinated or not. After all: “Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.” To conflate a purely self-regarding act with an other regarding one is not merely perverse but politically dangerous, as Mill would no doubt have recognised.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
No one supports forcing people to do something that they personally abhor, only what they consider acceptable. If it were the case that the greater good could be achieved by exterminating people with the surname Harris, John Harris would disagree strongly. Suddenly, he would find an argument in favour of the individual, and damn the collective. This is because he is a hypocrite and therefore to be dismissed. Any philosophy which argues in favour of breaking an individual’s right to bodily autonomy is depraved and always leads to nightmare hellscapes like Mao and Stalin.
What makes Harris’s argument even more contemptuous is that the injections do not work properly and also have an appalling safety profile. I have never heard of Harris before but he declares himself a monstrous tyrant whose name goes on the list of other public profile people who have committed these crimes against humanity with mass house arrests and gene therapies.
Wake Up, the ‘Boosters’ Are a Trap (As Predicted)
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/12/28/coronavirus-vaccine-booster-shot-health-effects.aspx?ui=1fb065e0c4152b58bd4ed94cf29c7cbfad40307fb723460ddabacd55f3c58b0c&sd=20210518&cid_source=dnl&cid_medium=email&cid_content=art1HL&cid=20211228&mid=DM1069789&rid=1362856588
As predicted over a year ago, we’re now on an injection treadmill with no end in sight, and every single dose carries the risk of serious side effects, up to and including permanent disability and death. This is the only scientifically sound way out of the failed experiment. How the Endless Boosters Will Destroy Immune Function
Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola
Tuesday 28th December 2pm to 3pm
Yellow Boards By the Road
By the Peel Centre Skimped Hill Lane,
Bracknell RG12 1EN
***********************
Stand in the Park Sundays from 10am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham – Howard Palmer Gardens Cockpit Path car park Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Join our Telegram Group
http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
We Brits are mainly a genetically rich rag-tag bunch of Celt, Anglo-Saxon, Norman and Viking blood… this means lurking within our genes is the will to dig deep and fight. Once stirred into action I still believe the masses will move from being compliant sheep to roaring lions.
History has shown this to be the case over centuries. This oppressive BUILD BACK BETTER agenda was never about a flu virus and its many annual winter mutations.
The current globalist gang trying to bully in a bio-security-state surveillance and social credit control system over once formerly free citizens – all in the name of RESETTING the ailing legacy financial system – requires the rolling reduction of the untermensch and elder pensioners to relieve the West’s payment obligations, that and the killing-off of wasteful carbon use industrial economies as the cure for climate change. Hence why frivolous entertainment and hospitality venues are being crushed, ditto the mass transit aviation and hotels businesses.
HOW DARE YOU!
If the penny hasn’t dropped yet, do you really need another year of globally crushing lifestyle restrictions to spell it out for you?
The reasons for Bozo’s current caution is he knows the fine balance of pushing the Brits too far… too quickly will unleash the kind of riots we had in the age of Poll Tax.
What would it take to trigger that more kiddie and young adult deaths?
https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/protests-erupt-south-korea-over-vaccination-deaths
Or when you realise that your or your families chances of pre 2020 reality privilege are gone for good?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOn9_StvCwM
Make 2022 the year when you start taking personal freedom back.
The Celts are more than one race.
Where is this race that doesn’t fight then?
I think they’ve hacked his (mercola) site.
Which goes to the heart of the harm principle on steroids equating to utilitarian reductio ad absurdum – slice it any way you like – safetyism is minimising so called collective suffering through any means (including death)… this is the stupid premise in which govts now make policy – in NZ the govt has just allowed an exception for euthansia whereby if you are suffering from covid and you ‘might’ die from it – you can take a lethal injection. And this while we continue to use an experimental dangerous jab for the common cold./ flu/ pneumonia while suppressing effective treatments. Insanity is an understatement.
Spot on. Your point about the efficacy of the vaccines is the key point and the author is clearly one of those ‘smart*sses’ who thinks that using a Victorian philospher and MP to justify his thinking is clever and ….. smug.
I could understand the pro-vaxxing argument if two conditions were fulfilled.
Firstly that the vaccine had an unequivocable record of doing minimal harm to the recipients, using other regularly used mass vaccines as a benchmark.
Secondly, that it was shown clearly that the vaccines consistently prevent infection after application and prevent transmission.
The first point is compounded by the fact that it appears that it would have to be used frequently to maintain what little protection it gives and each application has similar, if not increased, levels of risk to recipients.
Without satisfying both of these the argument fails.
You missed the most important point of all – that a vaccine is not needed for the vast majority of the population for a virus with a survival rate comparable to normal flu in all but the most vulnerable groups.
The most important point is that they have no moral right to decide what is to be injected into our bodies. That the Covid “vaccines”, are unfit for purpose, being negatively effective and dangerous are important but secondary matters. Those suggesting mandatory vaccination should be locked up for inciting violence and murder.
Both points are right-on and important. Humans should have autonomy over their own bodies and this disease poses no statistically significant health risk to the vast majority of the population. That is, one can use either valid argument to argue against MANDATORY vaccination. Both arguments should continue to be made.
There is evidence that other vaccines also cause harm, so I cannot agree with your first point.
Lets do another thought experiment. The issuing of multivitamins to every child in school would almost certainly improve their health, and no harm would ensue. Can you imagine the fuss that would follow, issues of consent, blah blah blah. Yet stabbing them with experimental gene therapies with considerable risks including lifelong heart conditions or death is handled akin to doling out a few sweeties.
Independent thought died about 4 decades ago, it’s all based on marketing and profit nowadays.
That is the bizarre thing. No recommendation on what people should do to reduce their chances of becoming ill or what to do if they catch covid.
Why isn’t anyone in media asking these questions?
Group think and ignorance, or instructions from above. Back in the 20th century, grannies, mothers and matrons shovelled cod liver oil, rose hip syrup and full fat milk into children and sick people. This basic , life-saving approach, ie the importance of nutrition, is all but forgotten or deliberately ignored, even by medics.
It has been beneficial to pharma to have poor health.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7505114/
The government by now has taken over almost all of the Mafia’s profitable and popular “rackets.” Drug dealing would be at the top of this lengthy list.
Unless you are poorly Pharma makes no money.
Nor does the Our NHS.
The mainstream media have given up asking cogent questions about anything. The media briefing sessions, where the nodding dogs merely ask when there will be further restrictions, are a parody.
You don’t have to look far to see why there is no questioning of value. The broadcast and print media have been bought, lock, stock and barrel, with tens of millions of taxpayer money; bribes distributed via advertising. For them, Christmas comes every month, as witness the massive “booster” campaign spend.
The “national broadcaster”, BBC, trips along with the government line on most things, in order to ingratiate itself, stave off any possible de-funding or reforms, and maintain the handsome salaries paid through the TV tax levy.
Great post. The “groupthink” in the “watchdog” press is approaching 100 percent. There is no “diversity” of opinion in newsrooms. It either never occurs to today’s journalists to ask skeptical questions of those with great power … Or, just as likely, journalists intuitively KNOW that they cannot ask such questions and/or challenge the authorized narratives. They also obviously share the same agenda as the officials they are allegedly covering.
The media are owned by the same people as the government. Blackrock, Vanguard etc. Who the individuals in control are I can only guess but these massive investment companies have huge influence over every aspect of commercial life and can decide which people and businesses can succeed or fail.
And the most harmful (apart from Covid) has been withdrawn. The level of harm done by others is nowhere near that of Covid vaccines, and that is after years, even decades, of trialling. There is simply no long term data on Covid vaccines and plenty of expert opinion that the harms already detected will be life long and may well only impact in later life due to heart weaknesses induced by the vaccine.
Your point about vitamins is made worse by the fact that the government conceded this by issuing vit D to vulnerable people, but in a dose far short of the generally accepted therapeutic levels.
The recommended daily amount of many vitamins is that which will just stave off the most obvious symptoms of deficiency. So even taking a single multivitamin a day, whilst better than nothing, probably won’t lead to optimum health.
Since the traditional foods consumed in northern latitudes have all but disappeared from people’s daily diets (oily fish, full fat milk), I would imagine many are deficient in vit D in winter. How many folk under the age of 40 have ever consumed a sardine or herring?
The government and NHS are causing deliberate harm by suppressing nutrition information whilst pushing the jabs.
Hardly suppressing nutrition information; there’s lots of it, which is why so many of us are obese.
The govt advice is to eat lots of carbs and no fat.
Some time ago, I started to cut out carbs and eat more fat (the good sort, like cheese, eggs and creamy yoghurt). In a few weeks, I’d shed all the unwanted fat that was slowing me down. Shame I’d needed to do the opposite of what the govt advise in order to achieve it.
My understanding is that I will also have reduced my insulin resistance, which was causing me to store the fat in the first place.
I’ve come to believe what you apparently have: That the entire “healthy diet” narrative has been WRONG. It’s interesting to look at the orchestrated push-back against Dr. Atkins, who popularized “low carb” diets and went against the entire health establishment in so doing. The Establishment ganged up on him just like the Establishment is ganging up against Robert Kennedy, Jr. for questioning the entire “public health” bureaucracies, especially their promotion of vaccines for every ill.
Well done you. A neighbour reversed his Type 2 diabetes by cutting out carbs and walking more. He lost weight, his blood pressure improved no end and he stopped his diabetes medication. He’s happier and healthier. People around him were mystified and reluctantly impressed but those needing to do what he did won’t because it involves determination and willpower and it’s easier just to eat rubbish while you sit and watch TV. Swimming against the tide of popular opinion requires too much effort.
As Goering or whichever Nazi it was said during Nuremburg; make the people terrified and you can make them do whatever you want. (paraphrased)
This has been the M.O. of authoritarians or Statists forever. Controlling people via fear-mongering works every time. The reason it works is that no skeptics challenge the bogus or dubious narratives early enough to stop them from having this great currency. Who controls these bogus narratives? If the public really wants to “drain the swamp,” it better purge the group-thinking co-opted newsrooms first.
If improving public health (and preventing preventable deaths) is now the primary goal, why don’t public health officials mandate regular weigh ins of people to improve the obesity epidemic? Clearly, obesity kills many more people than COVID-19. People should not be able to work and become a drain on society’s healthcare systems if they are putting themselves at risk by being grossly overweight. Surely, we can all agree with this if the goal is to prevent deaths and severe medical situations, right?
If you want to save a child’s father, MAKE that child’s father or mother lose 100 pounds. It would be for the parents and children’s benefit. The State has the means to make this result happen.
They use the word Libertarian. Clearly, it doesn’t mean what they think it means.
Maybe a History teacher can help them.
BTW, it’s not safe, and it’s not effective.
They also changed – or are trying to change – the definition of the word “Libertarian.”
To go with changing the definitions of “freedom” and “patriot” and “harm” and “effective” and “case” etc.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/orwell_was_right_control_the_language_control_the_world.html
P.S. I wrote this essay. I’m sure others could greatly expand this glossary of terms that have been re-defined to allow maximum control and fear.
I wonder if Injector Harris also argues vehemently against legal abortion? Because abortion is of course the paradigm case where an individual’s sovereignty over her own body directly results in the certain, unavoidable death of an identifiable individual. (Something which most certainly cannot be said for declining vaccination.)
Somehow I suspect he doesn’t; presumably only one form of vindictive, oppressive totalitarianism is fashionable in the circles in which he moves.
This is experimental and something the manufacturers have refused liability for. It does’nt make you immune to anything, all they can say is that it reduces your symptoms, but they can’t possibly know what symptoms you MAY have had. As they say, my body, my choice, of course, those advocating this forced medical intervention obviously haven’t thought it through
Mill and Bentham were greater demons of philosophy with their ‘Utilitarianism’ which, like covidianism, could be defined any way anyone who wanted to latch onto it, chose.
If Harris thinks the ‘antivaxxers’ are being mischevious, he is no more moral than an ‘Enlightened Despot’ – the absolute monarch hypocrites of that time. As well as being as thick as mince.
I don’t suppose many people are highly familiar with the works of Mill, or indeed those of many other philosophers and thinkers over centuries. Anyone with an ability to write fluently could probably make all sorts of convincing arguments for this, that or the other, from The Little Red Book, Mein Kampf or Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Come to that, there might be possibilities in the works of Enid Blyton.
There is almost nothing of weight written that cannot be reinterpreted, twisted and recycled as propaganda to further a particular aim, convince or coerce an audience or readership. We have abundant examples of this every day in the print and broadcast media.
One particular stratagem is to hark back to short-lived examples of medical coercion, particularly mid-Victorian, about the same time as “On Liberty”. At that time, we still had public hangings in this country, but I don’t see a great cry for those to be renewed.
Adolf Hitler supports mandatory vaccination
So does the nasty, wrinkly, semi-reincarnation of Stalin that slobbers about in Cardiff.
100% quacksination= totalitarianism. Literally.
The only solace you can take is that most of the current frontmen will be torn to shreds eventually. If the plandemic succeeds, by their lords and masters who will throw the petty obsequious bureaucrats aside in favour of more loyal hardmen or if it falls apart by the people.
Recently I’ve been intrigued by this thought/possibility: They aren’t going to be able to suppress the truth forever. The truth, at some point, will be learned and wildly acknowledged. Don’t some news organizations (or bureaucracies) at least have a few employees who want to get on the right side of history for when this day occurs? So far, I guess not, but maybe this could change?
I don’t care of it’s the bubonic plague or small pox, there is never a justification for forcing something into my body.
Medical rape.
I find it repugnant that any professor would try and validate it at all.
yes Rape is allowable when we are in a crisis of reproduction. In that case any woman can be forced to have a penis into her for the good of society.
Fuck off.
Utilitarianism is Bond villain logic:
‘Just shoot this child, and I won’t press the nuclear button’.
‘Just rape your mother, and I won’t execute those 8 men’.
What do you do?
You sense that no matter how many batches of children you shoot, the villain will still kill you at best and press the nuclear button at worst.
The answer is: you don’t shoot the child, even to avert the nuclear holocaust.
And today, we are being coerced by the Bond Villain State repeatedly, to avert a COLD. And giving in never works in this case, either.
The problem with all these brainy philosophers is they don’t have grasp of the basic facts. They don’t need to, you see, because they are so brainy. So they skip the hard yards of actually drilling down into the utter insanity of vaccines, and, like Toby, assuming that they are a shining example of the wonderful success of modern medicine, they plough on with their prejudices gussied up as high falutin’ philosophy. If Mill would have argued that the unvaxxed should pay for access to NHS, then Mill would have been just as ignorant of the salient facts as Harris. None of this philosophy matters, it is all just peeing into the wind. What matters is the hard facts that Covid is absolutely curable by cheap effective therapeutics, and the vaccines are an insane demonic catastrophe.
They should charge people at the door for their jab, cut to the chase.
No, the problem is they mistake their good memories as intelligence. What really counts is analytical ability which is why many uneducated people still become successful. That doesn’t mean education should not be valued, just not as highly as critical thinking.
Critical thinking – or those who regularly practice such thinking – is THE “threat” to to the corrupt and irrational Status Quo. In the “Covid debate,” those who think critically have been censored, attacked, maligned, etc. This is the immediate strategy. But we can also now better see the long game which was to “dumb down” education. This took decades of work. This effort is also now paying great dividends for those who do not want to be challenged by skeptics.
I wonder if Harris would be prepared to be filmed whilst he was holding down kicking, screaming women who did not want to be injected with an experimental product.
I doubt it. It wouldn’t fit with his, undeserved, perception of himself as a caring, virtuous person.
‘Misreading Mill’
A lending library for dyslexics?
Surely no sane person could agree with with forced vaccination!
These arguments lie in the wrong place. First of all it does not matter about any of these philosophers unless we consider the proposition that if we cede to the state the right to inject into us what it likes when it likes this is a power which can and will be abused and it has nothing to do with the greater good. It means the state has far too much power. Furthermore, it would be idle to pretend that there are not establishment persons nationally and globally with a eugenics agenda who find most of us dispensable.
Exactly. The same goes for lockdowns and all the other covid restrictions. Can and will be abused.
I think for some nefarious Deep State types, the “agenda” is the thing. For others, it was a case of “never let a good crisis go to waste.”
Both groups want much greater government control and are threatened by true notions of liberty and freedom.
It doesn’t really matter what their motives are/were. The key point is that they are going to do everything they can to solidify their controls and implement even more draconian measures.
Plus, of course, the whole notion of a mandatory NHS is anathema to Mill’s entire argument in ‘On Liberty’.
We are forced to ‘join’ the NHS; allocated a NHS number on birth, and forced to pay for it through taxes. Why? To ‘protect’ us from illness & disease. Our freedom of choice is removed ‘for our own good’. And we’ve seen where this leads: shut in our houses to ‘protect the NHS’.
This coerced ‘help’ is exactly what Mill was arguing against. I have no doubt he would agree that the NHS could legitimately withhold medical treatment from those who decline vaccination- or from those who fail to meet any other requirements set by the NHS. But he would also hold that free citizens should not be forced by the state, for their health, to enrol in the NHS or to pay for it or to be subject to its requirements.
We should be free to leave the NHS. To elect neither to benefit from it nor contribute to it. Once that freedom is granted, all arguments for mandatory vaccinations collapse.
I don’t care if it is the elixir of life distilled from the sweat of newborn unicorns, with 100% efficacy against covid. Nobody has the right to force or even attempt to coerce anyone into injecting anything into their body. The fact that there are emergency authorisations, but no marketing approvals in place for this novel pharmaceutical intervention, no long term safety data, proven underreporting of adverse events, no apparent liability for anyone involved, multiple historic misdemeanours by the manufacturers and that the first doses appear to be the introduction to an increasingly ineffectual booster treadmill for which there is no end in sight, supported and driven by a world wide concerted propaganda campaign means that there are ample (albeit unnecessary) reasons not to have the injection should anyone feel reluctant.
2022 has to be the year the brave and courageous reclaim the ancient freedoms and liberties the people of this country have fought and died for, particularly throughout the 20th century. Doing nothing is no longer an option now.
This proto-Fascist-Communist coup has to be defeated.
I agree. 2022 might be one of the pivotal years in world history. Massive lies are even going to be exposed and the people take back control of the world … or things are going to get a lot worse. Bad developments are accelerating. And that’s just the ominous signs the public does see.
What a waste of time and space – except on an entirely irrelevant theoretical level.
The authors write of “the immense death toll and burden of the disease”.
There has been none, ffs!!! That is the basic fact of this non-pandemic, non-epidemic – shown by mortality and funeral data over an extended period. And yet the crass assumption still doesn’t get edited out.
The entire shit-show is based on a myth.
Nothing to do with the “tyranny of the medical of the socialist state” – just one big, fat lie, used to conscript people to a phony war.
“Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.” – Is this a quote from Popper, or Mill?
The moral argument is rather complicated.
First they convinced everyone that covid was deadly to everyone, and then produced vaccines that were proclaimed to protect the self and to protect others and where there were no risks (safe and effective)
Thus the majority would have been taking the vaccine to protect the self and to protect others.
I’ve emboldened the ‘protect self’ bit — in many this was the deciding feature (remember all those family members of council officials found to have been vaccinated in Jan 2020 — they didn’t break the rules to protect others).
In addition, there were many who chose the vaccine to protect their income (particularly healthcare workers) or to protect their ability to go on holiday. Beyond that, surely there were rather a few that chose vaccination out of inertia (everyone else is doing it) or peer pressure (particularly children).
Oh, and there would be a very small number whose primary deciding factor would have been to protect others.
It is very important to note that for most of the vaccine period everyone will have been bombarded with messages that the vaccines are safe — their actual safety is unimportant, what is important is that people were told that they were safe and thus thought that they were safe.
So, can we really invoke Mills in this case? The majority seem to have chosen vaccination to protect their health, income, freedom to go on holiday or perhaps emotional security, and not as a selfless act. Sure, they might have incidentally gained this ‘protect others’, but it shouldn’t be used as a moral argument for vaccination of the rest.
And then you have the vaccine refuseniks. Now, they didn’t act out of a pathological need for self-harm or to put others at risk — so what’s left?
The pro-vaxxer would claim that it is that last point that mattered, and that the refusenik was selfishly and foolishly deciding to protect the self against vaccine harm, and, because they had mistakenly overestimated the risk from the vaccines they were thus guilty of committing a moral sin (choosing to protect the self over protection of others).
But the majority didn’t take the vaccine to protect others, just to protect aspects of the self. Thus the majority of the vaccinated and unvaccinated are equally amoral (not immoral, amoral) — they didn’t make their decision to take or not take the vaccine based on a moral framework, and so it is inappropriate to use a moral framework to convince ‘the rest’ to get vaccinated — that is imposing upon them a responsibility that wasn’t accepted by the vast majority of those vaccinated so far.
Finally, I note that time has shown the vaccines to be rather less effective than claimed in terms of protection of the self, much less effective than claimed in terms of protection of others, rather less safe than claimed (particularly when you add in the multiplication of risk that comes from multiple boosters), covid was less risky than claimed and has evolved to become even less risky. It turns out those refusing the vaccine were probably right all along.
Note that bit in bold in the paragraph above — it is likely that the vaccinated are now more likely to become infected with covid and infect others. What of the moral framework for vaccination now? Well, it doesn’t turn the vaccinated into immoral beasts — what it does do is turn the spotlight onto others….
In general, the ethical and moral framework only points in one direction — the majority of people made a decision without considering morals (ie, it wasn’t done ‘for the greater good’, even if they claim this was the case post-hoc), and those promoting the vaccines could be regarded as ‘useful idiots’ (all those actors and sportspeople who were persuaded to promote vaccination). Politicians are a bit more complex — they’re also ‘idiots’ in that they generally don’t understand the first thing about the immune system, but they so seem to be acting to preserve the self now that the covid response is starting to fall apart — so they are guilty of a moral sin and a spotlight should be shone onto this. But, the main moral failure is in the actions of the pharma companies, who acted to promote their ability to earn vast sums of money by aggressively overselling the performance of their vaccines while underplaying their risks.
The instinct to protect the self is enormous, and readily taken advantage of. The entire field of medicine has a moral obligation to restrain itself from profiteering by taking advantage of human misery — we already have laws and frameworks that protect the public from rogue medics, and have had so since the time of Hippocrates. Our experience during these covid times suggests that our laws need to be updated.
An excellent analysis, amanuensis.
I would add a further social-moral imperative against taking the ‘vaccine’ – namely the way in which accepting a curtailed testing programme undermines the whole fabric of the framework that has been developed to protect society (for real) against the selling of poisonous snake-oil.
I have no problem asserting my selfishness, as i’ve said many times I have no objections to any mitigation measures, if it makes people feel better fine, I do take exception to them being mandated by the state I strongly object to the government taking liberties it does not should not ever have.
Everyone’s choices throughout this shit show have been selfish, there is no greater selfish act than socialism! What ever their action was during the last 2 years the underlying reason has been self-preservation or fear.
Very thoughtful post. I frame the debate in the template used by rebel journalists like Caitlin Johnstone, who argues that “controlling the narrative” is the only real metric that matters. Control the narrative, you control the world. John Stossel is another contrarian journalist who routinely produces segments that illustrate that much of “conventional wisdom” is either wrong or dubious.
Most of the points you make above resonated with the masses for one reason only – because they falsely believed the assumptions and the narratives were true and factual. It’s hard for people to make any choice – moral or otherwise – if the information they believe is true is not true. The people who are committing the greatest sins are those who know the information is false and promulgate this false information anyway. These people and organizations also do everything they can to persecute those who would expose that the narratives/assumptions/conventional wisdom are false.
So you basically have two groups: Those who know they are spreading lies and protecting lies and do this anyway (for their own selfish reasons) … and those who lack the critical-thinking skills to figure this out for themselves. As it turns out, it’s been surprisingly easy for the former group to manipulate the masses in the latter group.
FWIW, it is largely selfless people who try to expose all the lies. These people also know they are going to be attacked and suffer professional or personal harm by challenging the Establishment or the Powers that Be. But they try to do this anyway despite the harms and risks they suffer.
But this could really be described as a “selfish” effort as well. These people are trying to improve their own lives and futures (and those of the people they care the most about) by “outing” the liars. So, point taken, we are all acting in a way we think would benefit ourselves.
Don’t forget that forcing someone to undergo any medical procedure against their will (however unfounded this unwillingness might be) is basically rape, a violation of the victim’s body against their objections. All that matters to classify it as such is the victim’s perception of this action, not whether or not the action causes any actual harm (similarly to how the harm of being raped for many actual rape victims is mental, rather than physical). Threatening people with rape over prolonged periods of time is comparable to psychological torture.
Now, there would need to be extraordinary social benefits indeed to justify rape and rape threats. Such benefits simply don’t exist. Therefore compulsory (or even coercive) vaccination must be rejected outright.
“Libertarian lockdown enthusiasts”? Really?
that’s a big fat oxymoron
“John Harris makes the moral case for mandatory vaccination in the public interest.”
Many of us have long lasting natural immunity – what’s the vaccine for?
Absolutely wonderful article! Thank you Luke!
It’s shame that the national conversation cannot reach these depths and heights.
“…by seeking to reduce avoidable death, hospitalisations and excessive pressure on the NHS.”
The NHS has had 2 years to get its act together and done nothing
Who decides the utilitarian calculus, and what if they’re wrong or evil?
There is no worse tyranny than that of moral chaos, which now rules the earth.
Nevertheless, we are in the right.
All vaccines cause far more harm than they do good.
The entire science of vaccinology is a massive fraud.
Dr Susan Humphries has written a book called -Dissolving Illusions: Disease, Vaccines, and The Forgotten History.
The book is a comprehensive take down of the faux science of vaccinology and shows how improvements in public health, proper sanitation, clean water and food standards were the reason of massive improvements in public health, not the Doctors and their vaccines.
The simple fact that mortality rates had plummeted (as general public health measures were introduced) long before most vaccines were even available proves that vaccines can not take credit for the massive reductions in mortality.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This book utterly blew my mind, and I’ve read plenty of materials in this topic. But somehow, this book cuts through the clutter. The account of the historical resistance in Leicester in the 1870s is worth the price of the book alone. Someone could cut and paste the hysterical reactions of the authorities to the united decision of the people of Leicester to throw the vaccinators out of town next to the hysterical reactions of the authorities in our day, and you will see that they are the same script, almost in some cases the same words. Childhood vaccination against smallpox went from 95% to 5% in two years and guess what happened. Or guess what didn’t happen, the apocalypse. But yeah, the whole book is so on point. Get it, read it. Then get RFK Jr’s magnum opus on Fauci, and you’re good to go.
This seems like a very academic discussion in the pejorative sense of academic. The title of the Telegraph piece was “Is there a moral duty to get vaccinated?” which would be a substantive discussion with implications for very many people. But Harris argued for mandatory vaccination, which is quite different, and I don’t think the government is seriously considering implementing mandatory vaccination for the general public. (They do of course implement mandatory vaccination as a condition of employment for some roles but that is rather different).
However, from an academic point of view I can’t see any problem with quoting Mill to support mandatory vaccination. Mandatory vaccination can only really be justified on something like the harm principle. If failing to vaccinate could be shown to do sufficient harm to others then Mill would justify mandatory vaccine. There is of course a whole empirical debate about how much harm failing to vaccinate does to others but that is not a philosophical issue.
I don’t feel under any particular moral obligation to protect others, and also think that any society that introduces a legal obligation to protect others has gone or will go off the rails. I would make an exception for protecting my loved ones in terms of moral obligation, though I would also expect them to protect themselves as best they could, and in terms of legal obligation there should probably be a legal obligation to protect one’s non-adult children. I think it best to stop there, any further “protecting others” activity to be entirely voluntary.
I don’t feel under any particular moral obligation to protect others
So if you see a tree which is likely to fall on passers-by you don’t feel a moral obligation to report it? If you are first on the scene at an apparently serious road accident you don’t feel a moral obligation to stop?
Just to clarify: has this ever happened to you? You saw a tree, decided it was likely to fall on passers-by, and reported it. Who to exactly? And why were you so sure it was going to fall? I mean, do you check every tree you see, give it a shake to check for structural integrity then send off a stiffly worded email to the local council? Wow. Good for you. What about if you saw a carriage hurtling down the street, and you were right next to the track-switcher, and on track there was a schoolbus full of children, and on the other, a duck, and on the third, three nuns. Which way would you switch it? What if the duck was two ducks and it was only one nun? What about if the school bus was an ambulance? What about if there were a thousand tracks you could switch it between, and 999 of them had the works of John Stuart Mill, and one had a christmas present for a child? What then? What about the tree hanging over the track? Would you phone the authorities to tell them first, or switch the train then deal with the track? Morality is so exhausting.
Just to clarify: has this ever happened to you? You saw a tree, decided it was likely to fall on passers-by, and reported it. Who to exactly? And why were you so sure it was going to fall?
Close. It was a nearby mature ash tree that was likely to fall on a house. It had been cut back some years ago but could still cause substantial damage and could easily kill someone. I reported it to the council (by e-mail) and also told the owner of the tree. I was pretty sure it was going to fall in the near future because it was divided into two (see attached photograph which I sent to the council) and my wife noticed that the division had widened noticeably in the course of a few days – also there was signs of rot at the base where it divided.
No I don’t check every tree – but if I notice one that presents a threat to others I do feel morally obliged to protect them by at least reporting it.
I don’t understand the point of your comment. Of course some moral decisions are tricky and the trolley examples are famously criticised for being too unreal. But none of this affects the main issue – are you morally obliged to protect others? I could have just left the tree. It wasn’t going to fall on my house. But I think that if it had then fallen and done damage or injury I would have been morally culpable. Don’t you?
The point of my comment was basically comedy. The serious point though was sending up these kind of moral questions where people pose all kinds of artificial scenarios and force you to declare your decision. Meanwhile, back in the real world. Of course, no one is going to ignore imminent danger to another person if there’s a simple chance of preventing it. On the other hand, no one goes around checking every tree to make sure it’s not going to fall. We’re all a mixture of moral on a good day, and not so much when we’re tired or grumpy or whatever. The point here is that the kind of moral obligation being discussed is whether you should take the vaccine to protect others. Or maybe not, I can’t be bothered reading the thread now. So, yeah, comedy. I was making a joke.
In general I would probably try to help in the case of an obvious danger that I could help with, if the cost to me was not excessive. In that circumstance, I would pobably feel guilty if I failed to help. But there’s a lot of qualification going on here, and all of the considerations are being made by me and are for me to make. But my priority is me and my loved ones, with the constraint that I would feel obliged to try not to CAUSE harm. But that’s different from not PREVENTING harm. I am not responsible for viruses (unless I am a worker in the Wuhan lab that leaked covid).
So there are some circumstances in which you feel morally obliged to protect others.
all of the considerations are being made by me and are for me to make.
Of course – otherwise it would not be a moral decision – you would just following someone else’s rules.
But my priority is me and my loved ones,
As it is for most people – but that does not negate lower priorities when they can be fulfilled without affecting your highest priorities
I would feel obliged to try not to CAUSE harm. But that’s different from not PREVENTING harm.
Yes – but we were discussing examples of preventing harm (the dangerous tree) and you seemed to think there was some obligation connected with that
I am not responsible for viruses
No. But if you are able to protect people from the harm done by viruses at little cost to yourself then surely you are obliged to do that?
Not sure about “obliged” – I guess I would oblige myself, but it’s for me and no-one else to determine that. I mean, others might judge me for what I did or did not do, and they are entitled to that view, but that’s where it should end. I think the circumstances in which there is an “obligation” are very limited and are not really the province of politicians to pontificate on – it should be limited to priests. As soon as you start to talk about general moral obligations to help others, we arrive at where we are now, where someone behaving in a way that would have been considered normal prior to 2020, for all of recorded history, is villified or arrested.
It is impossible to be a libertarian lockdown enthusiast.
J.S. Mill was not a friend of liberty.
What kind of nonsense is this, there is only one motive behind support for mandatory state mitigation, cowardly selfishness.
Harris has been one of the better contributors to the Grauniad. But, it’s no surprise that, after years of rubbing shoulders with the others, he was bound to be infected.
If only he could have been vaccinated against that.
There is an inherent problem with the harm principle that Mill does not address and that gives rise to these kinds of issues for those who seek to use his thinking as a guide in this kind of case. That is, what level of risk to others rises to the level of harm. There is no de minimis threshold, nor any guidance as to how to set one.
And in that regard, Harris renders his argument absurd from the outset with this ridiculous exaggeration:
“in view of the urgency of the global Covid pandemic and the immense death toll and burden of the disease“
In reality, covid is and always was just another respiratory pandemic of the kind we have encountered every few decades throughout history, causing ill health and death broadly comparable to other pandemics within living memory.
But Jones and Rainsborough imo are correct in identifying the point at which Mill can be used to refute Harris’ argument:
“The point is, though, that an individual’s engagement in the routines of daily life is in, the vast majority of instances, not “calculated to produce evil to someone else”.”
We can have no reasonable expectation of or right to a life without any ordinary exposure to respiratory viruses, in going about our ordinary lives. Since we have no right to such an expectation, depriving us of it is not harm. Further, in going out and about in society we consent to run these inherent risks.
Those who prefer not to consent to these risks can certainly set up consensual private areas where different rules (masking, “vaccination”, etc) apply, but they cannot impose those behaviours upon others.
“We can have no reasonable expectation of or right to a life without any ordinary exposure to respiratory viruses, in going about our ordinary live”
Indeed, and what’s worse is that not only can we not have any such reasonable expectation, but if we try it’s doomed to fail anyway, and all we do is make life shit for everyone, which is exactly what has happened.
I do object to your references to a “respiratory pandemic.”
There has been no such thing.
John Stuart Mill in Principles of Political Economy:
John Stuart Mill pretty well sums up the modern UK and points to the remedies needed to restore justice and order. Albeit, there may be too many miserable creatures and not enough willing to take-on and defeat the injustice.
By the way, no one, other than a propagandist, could read John Stuart Mill’s works and believe that he would support forcing people to take untested mRNA gene serums.
In fact, John Stuart Mill says the exact opposite. He says, don’t be a miserable cowardly creature and stand up and fight for you and your children’s freedom if necessary.
Great work.
It’s really John Stuart Mill’s work, but thank you
Translated…….These are the words of the coronavirus you now call Omicron.
“Your welfare is our concern.
There is no war. You cannot weaponize people against us. You no longer need to make false promises. It was never our intention to destroy human beings.
This exercise was designed to remind all people, who amongst us can and cannot be trusted. It is now over”.
I’m certainly no great student of philosophy, but I do intuitively understand that “thinking about thinking” (or truths) is kind of important.
One point I’d make is that very few public officials have a true and strong personal or political philosophy based on great study. In short, they have no core principles.
If many more did (and if these principles were grounded in the philosophies of liberty and freedom), none of these mandates would have been authorized.
Of all the politicians I’ve observed, Ron Paul comes the closest to a political figure who HAS grounded his political career in economic and political philosophy. Alas, Paul is largely considered a “kook” and has been dismissed and attacked by the establishment for his entire political career. (A sad commentary: It does NOT pay off politically to have strong and principled convictions. Indeed, the opposite is the case. Those who have no core principles do much better in this profession).
Anyway, you don’t need specific elements of science to reject many of these initiatives. Most can be rejected on grounds of principle or philosophy … if such arcana actually mattered.
Politicians have always behaved appallingly, it is baked into the system. We are saved from their worst excesses in democracies by alternating periods of different rule; where alternation doesn’t occur (such as in Zimbabwe, China or Putin’s Russia) things just go from bad to worse.
What’s more, in an open society where debate is welcomed, different views and philosophies get aired and the politicians, or at least the better of them, pay lip service or more to their edicts.
What has happened in the UK is that debate has been stifled just at the point where a huge shift in scientific prominence was taking place. Worse still is that few people are actually aware that the BBC, the principal media news outlet in the UK, has been effectively censored. So we were stuck in a philosophical perspective that couldn’t be challenged.
What keeps me awake at night is the realisation that the very slight turning of the tide that we are currently seeing might rest on the shoulders of a few individuals and lucky circumstance: De Santis, this website, a handful of Tory MPs and the internet.
It was a close run thing, as someone once said.
Well said. The same things keep me awake at night. Or expressed differently, it bothers me to no end that there are no “alternative” voices in the halls of power.
Please don’t despair….when a country says they’ve jabbed X, it’s usually Y.
Y is usually the number of people who’ve willingly laid down their arms for the state, with little or no thought and X is the rest of us.
I guarantee Y is two thirds…..same as the UK. Clearly, two thirds in terms of jab numbers alone…including some people who have probably been paid to be jabbed many times (heroes who have taken one for the team).
So….we know there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Let’s wait and see how many French people protest….it’s going to be more than the MSM would have you believe.
I am hopeful (possibly misplaced hope) that every country’s population holds at least a third of critical thinking, government mistrusting heroes.
We will win the day….and I hope I’m around to see it. I can’t wait to tell the grandchildren what I did during the war!
Isn’t “libertarian lockdown enthusiast” oxymoronic?
There was never going to be 100% “vaccination, but there’s been far more than the 15 million that was supposed to be enough to end the cycle of lockdowns. The remaining pure bloods have nothing to do with any ineffectiveness of this dangerous drug