Vaccine Mandates

The Public Square
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I think you mean for not bailing on the treaty negotiated by his predecessor. But not bailing is not the same as competently executing.

And we can say this without necessarily preferring it or even advocating it. It does seem that all evidence points to this eventuality. The question will be, how will the Church shepherd in the midst of it? The extent that her shepherds preach general obedience or particular obedience, will likely be the point at which the flocks will recognize the voice of their shepherds. Again, this is not advocacy but observation.

You may not know…but he vehemently attacked me when I voiced concerns for the health and safety of the elderly and the disabled, and his indifference to that in relation to his judgement upon the government. The arguments were cold and callused. It was at that point that I understood, no matter how much I might have agreed with him on the issue of abortion, he was little better than Captain Ahab. You didn’t have to be a member of PETA to see when the captain was loosing it.

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He actually violated the terms of the agreement Trump negotiated, which was probably one of the things that was poorly executed.

And strong agree on the competent execution part.

Strong agree.

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This is not correct. Since the U.S. Constitution is a document, it cannot stand before the Lord to be judged (Matt. 25:32). As stated in the Preamble, it is the people (collectively) who ordained the Constitution and who can amend it at will.

I am not asserting majority rule. Instead I am advocating in making use of the mechanisms laid out in the Constitution by which the greater magistrate of the American people (collectively) can discipline the lesser magistrates for not upholding their oaths of office.

The reality is that a minority of Americans have voted for politicians who said they were pro-life but didn’t deliver. But there’s never been a committed pro-life majority of voters.

Rather hyperbolic, I think. But the success of Trump in winning the 2016 election demonstrates to me that there is a strong sentiment for change and the ability of voters to push it through. Yes, President Trump was thwarted in every way, but he brought many weaknesses to the table. I think a more disciplined man with a cadre of like-minded and able men behind him could make much more headway.

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Our real problem is not the world and the rulers elected by our neighbors, but ourselves. Even the most conservative and reformed pastors don’t preach against the slaughter of the unborn as their own husbands, wives, and docs do it, and such chemical abortions are far away the largest bloodshed the world has ever known, far outstripping surgical abortions. The problem with all the talk about tyranny is its assumption that Christians aren’t the problem. Even conservative reformed Christians are, in fact, the problem. As I have repeatedly said, our own people are using ECPs, IUDs, the Pill, Depo-Provera, etc., and there is blood on their hands. Yet these are the very people who have public conniptions over Planned Parenthood, HEK293, and tyrannical rulers.

No pro-life movement anywhere has ever focussed its efforts on the true source of the greatest number of murders of the unborn, which has always been birth control. For instance, how many IUD murders were committed by the Chinese during all those years they estimated their surgical murders at (I think) 350,000,000?

Back around 1980, Koop said surgical abortion would become negligible as abortions were carried out earlier and earlier, chemically. That’s long happened.

So now, who do we think we are? I mean, really? Or who do we think our people are we are whipping into frenzies over masks and vaccines? Can’t we just imagine the government we’d install if we carried out our threats of armed revolution just under the surface of all the agitating about tyranny.

I’m not against endless talk about stats and motives of authorities in handling of stats and wickedness in high places now and at other times, but who do we think we are? Who do we think the Church is, today? Who do we think our own churches are, today? We all know who the PCA is today, right? And what about the OPC—Carl and his troops being feted by Crosspolitic, if anyone noticed.

See, my own problem is the hidden premises of all the talk, which is that we’re the goodies and the rest of the people of the US are the baddies, and if we goodies were allowed to govern, we’d do things better.

This does not render discussions of what better things could be done and what badder things oughtn’t to be done purposeless, of course. Men understand cheap talk can be good, and this despite every woman’s condemnation of it as a waste of time. But perspective, men; perspective.

If my own congregation came into power, I’m not sure how much better it’s governance would be than what we already have in Indiana, and I for sure would say that the moral and ethics of Indiana are nothing to end tyranny with. What about Joseph Spurgeon’s, Joseph Bayly’s, Joel Norris’s, Aaron Prelock’s, or Andrew Dionne’s congregations? Would any of us claim to be the pastor or new bosses who would not be the same as the old bosses? And if not “the same,” so noticeably better that we’ll all join together and say we want a revolution?

I don’t mean to insult all of the good points made above by everyone, but my recurring question as I’ve watched is “who do we think we are” and “who do we think our people (flocks) are” and “what possible reason would any of us think we would do it better had God called us to the positions of authority we are vociferating against so constantly over masks, and now vaccines?”

With affection,

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Is there no hope, then?

I want to believe that if an evangel presbytery pastor became governor, he would rule well, though he most likely would not want the position.

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Well, I might agree we have a good gubernatorial candidate who’d serve if asked, I’m guessing, and then there’s you and me and the cat, and my wife and yours… four swallows doth not electability make and even 10,000 swallows doth not a revolt against tyrants make. Love

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Depends on if they are African or European swallows.

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Supreme vaccination power derives from a mandate from homeschooling missus, not a farcical CDC executive summary.

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You are entitled to your opinion. But Gen. Milley reportedly opposed Trump’s desire to invoke the Insurrection Act against the BLM rioters last year, despite the military having been used to restore order in American cities numerous times in history, including in my memory. He also publicly apologized for following his C-in-C to the church, while Trump was still in office.

The actual facts of how the FBI attempted to rig the 2016 election and the aftermath of the election against Trump are appalling. They manipulated the FISA process to spy on Trump and bring about the Muller investigation to thwart his administration. There’s no way to deny at this point that the national security apparatus was used against the duly elected president.

You can call my interpretation of those facts hyperbolic if you like, but those are the facts.

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I’ll admit I looked at who ‘liked’ this post to see who got the reference!

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That’s literally how all the good things that have ever happened, happened.
So. Somebody grab the cat and throw it in! :grinning:

Or the gubernatorial candidate. :wink:

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I’m in…

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Yes, your interpretation is hyperbolic. Did Gen. Milley refuse a direct order to deploy the military to restore order, or did he merely voice strong opposition to the idea? And how does using FISA to spy on Trump and facilitating the Muller investigation amount to “rigging an election”? Trump won the election, and the spying and investigation all came to nothing and discredited those who pushed it in the eyes of neutral observers. Sure, some people still believe all that, but they were never going to vote for Trump anyway.

I don’t deny that the establishment greatly opposed Trump and constantly looked for ways to undermine him. But we don’t do ourselves any favors by overamping rhetoric.

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Below is P&G’s vaccine/testing mandate, announced today, 16 Sept 2021, to employees. I only copied into here the detailed facts, leaving out the surrounding rhetoric.

I don’t know what the Federal rules are. This is P&G’s implementation of the Federal mandate including, among other influences, the company’s own decisions. The CEO stated clearly the company and he made these decisions.

Highlights include:

  • required for employment effective 1 Nov 2021
  • Remote workers are not excluded.
  • Contractors are “expected” to comply.
  • no mention of exemptions for past infections
  • The company decides which medical/religious exemptions will be granted, not the gov’t seemingly.
  • Any of three vaccines are acceptable.
  • Employees who choose to remain unvaccinated without an exemption must pay for their own weekly testing and undergo it on personal time.
  • P&G reserves the right to stop allowing personal choice for testing.
  • These requirements apply to all U.S.-based employees (as well as subsidiaries) working in offices, plants, innovation centers, and mixing centers—as well as those who are not working in an office for any reason, including location-free or field-based roles. Given this federal directive, we expect our external business partners (e.g., contractors) to comply as well.
  • By November 1, employees must be fully vaccinated, with two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the J&J vaccine.
  • Qualifying medical or religious reasons will be considered for exemptions to vaccination. Those who have a Company-approved vaccine exemption will be required to test weekly and will be supported by the Company for associated costs. The process to seek a medical or religious exemption from vaccination is still being finalized and can be obtained via your HR manager in the coming weeks.
  • Employees have a personal choice not to be vaccinated, though they must arrange and pay for weekly testing. Given this is a personal choice, time spent testing will not be considered working time nor will employees be reimbursed for the cost of testing. The Company may, at its sole discretion or at the direction of federal or state authorities, eliminate the personal choice option for weekly testing in the future.
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Depending on Federal guidance, there is a potential loophole for sympathetic employers in that they may have discretion in granting exemptions. Maybe past infections will fall under medical exemptions, but I expect the medical exemption is only for people for whom the vaccine would be dangerous for other medical reasons. I expect large corporations will farm out the exemption decision, like they do for disability decisions. Often the health or life or disability insurance companies handle this sort of thing.

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I read an article late last week that stated that many large companies have been wanting to do a vaxx mandate for some time but have been unwilling to eat the employee turnover that would result. The federal mandate gives these companies an excuse to do what they wanted to do all along.

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That seemed true at Kroger and P&G. Kroger had a hard time keeping front line workers before 2020: annual turnover was over 100%, meaning most workers stayed less than a year. And Kroger had been tiptoeing around bringing corporate workers back to the office for months, being very careful not to piss off those whining anonymously or publicly about wanting to stay home. It’s amazing how the company line was so consistently about how much productive we’d become with no discussions on the negatives of WFH.

P&G, in the U.S., though bringing office workers into the office earlier than Kroger, never let down on universal masking and distance rules, and has treated all employees the same…until now, finally treating the unnvaccinated differently. This was clearly looming as the voluntary vaccination status reporting became mandatory three weeks ago. The federal mandate helped make this discrimination possible but so also did our rising percentage of vaccinated workers. By the way, our D.C. office was the first to hit 100%.

No doubt, whipped up fears about variants, valid or not, combined with vaccination rates hitting some critical percentage, has given the powers confidence to become more forceful.

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The religious accommodation arguments are going to be interesting to see for at least two reasons:

First, I recently went to a seminar recently on the topic of religious accommodation, and the speaker warned against mixing political/philosophical/medical reasons in with the religious reasons against the vaccines. That was interesting because most of the pastoral/denominational letters support congregant’s religious objections are full of political/philosophical/medical reasons. The attorney presenting said the employer may be able to deny the accommodation under Title VII if the reason for the accommodation is motivated by the political/philosophical/medical reasons rather than the religious conviction. It’s not an area of law I have looked into much, but seemed an important caution in light of the pastoral support letters floating around. The other big factor is what kind of a burden the accommodation is on the employer, apparently the bar for an “undue burden” is pretty low.

The other interesting aspect is whether employers require employees to be (perfectly) consistent to qualify for an accommodation. There was a recent article where in response to an increase in religious accommodation requests for COVID-19 vaccination exemption based on their use of fetal cell lines, Conway Regional Health System made a list of 30 commonly used medicines that used fetal cell lines in a similar manner. These commonly used medicines include: Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, aspirin, Tums, Lipitor, Senokot, Motrin, ibuprofen, Maalox, Ex-Lax, HIV-1, Benadryl, Sudafed, albuterol, Preparation H, MMR vaccine, Claritin, Zoloft, Prilosec OTC, and azithromycin. In order to qualify for the religious accommodation exception to the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, “Employees are asked to attest that they ‘truthfully acknowledge and affirm that my sincerely held religious belief is consistent and true’ and that they do not and will not use the medications and any others like them.” Now, there are potentially some differences in how the cell line was used for testing or approval, etc…but HEK293 fetal-derived cell lines are commonly used for medicine testing. Certainly not used for the original formulations of Tylenol, but potentially for the newest gel-tab version. And certainly they are used for testing many chemotherapeutics and other commonly used life saving drugs. When that comes to light, how will that affect Christians opposed to fetal-derived cell lines from using another drug that was tested/approved based on HEK293 experiments.

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Joel, the problem here is that by your understanding of what the Bible prescribes for governance, you are not submitting yourself to the supreme law of the land, by saying only a natural person and not a document can hold authority.

The President is not the supreme ruler upon whom all authority and responsibility falls, nor is the Chief Justice or Speaker of the House .

Perhaps you disagree with the constitution about its division of powers and authority, but it is divided, and while the division itself creates limits, it is only in submission to the Constitution that it remains so.

Your claim that the people can simply amend the constitution at will is also fallacious. It simply is not the case. It is the federal legislature and states’ legislatures that are necessary and sufficient to make those changes. Not a general election.

We should not be so apoplectic about the authority of objective and written Law, and the submission of rulers to it. It has always been the case, even and especially in the Old Testament.

“Now it shall come about when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. It shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, by carefully observing all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted up above his countrymen and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may continue long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.
— Deuteronomy 17:18-20

Naturally you’ll say that God’s law isn’t the same as the US Constitution, and obviously it’s not. But it’s God who prescribes that rulers be subordinate to a law outside of themselves, for the purpose that he not be elevated above his countryman.

Take notes of where all the rulers are positioned on this org chart.

image
image4032×3024 2.68 MB

Interesting though that USA.gov has subsequently hidden this infographic from their page on how the government is organized. Sounds like someone has lifted HIMSELF above his countrymen.

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The pee tape dossier, the FISA warrants and the Mueller investigation were all of one piece. The Clinton campaign funded the DNC who paid a law firm to hire Fusion GPS who hired Steele to write the dossier. Steele began talking to the FBI in the summer of 2016. At that point the FBI had already been working paid sources (Halper, Mifsud) on various members of the Trump outer circle like Papadopolous.

The Clinton campaign, both directly and through Fusion GPS media cutouts, tried to make Trump/Russia into a campaign issue. Clinton brought it up at the third debate, calling Trump, in effect, a Putin puppet. They also planted that Trump Tower/Russia bank hoax story before the election.

The first Carter Page FISA warrant, issued largely due to the pee tape dossier, was issued in October 2016, well before the election.

Page: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”
Strzok: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it,”

Then comes November 4th and Trump wins. The agglomeration of partisans, mediaites and NatSec officials, having failed to deny Trump the office of the presidency, decided to deny him the power of the presidency. FISA warrants are renewed against Trump-adjacent figures, plus unmasking in the waning days of the Obama administration, then the FBI hit on Gen. Flynn.

General Flynn is worth a small aside. He was the duly appointed National Security Advisor to a duly elected US President. The FBI basically executed a hit on him in his own office. The number of law enforcement, prosecutorial and judicial abuses in the Flynn case is shocking, and really works as a metaphor for the Trump administration’s relationship to law enforcement, prosecutors and the judicial branch. You can say what you like about Flynn: the abuses of power were beyond the pale.

After tricking Jeff Sessions into recusing himself, the Mueller investigation was off and running. Every leak from Mueller’s team was hostile to Trump—no surprise given the makeup of the team. Mueller himself, of course, in a foreshadowing of the gerontocratic Biden, turned out not to have the faintest idea what his investigation was all about.

Mueller’s deputies and the Democrats managed to hold the Russia hoax over Trump’s head until after the Democrats won the midterms, cutting the final hamstring on Trump’s domestic agenda (all the other hamstrings having already been cut by Paul Ryan).

So:

  1. The Russia hoax began its life in the Clinton campaign.
  2. The FBI (or other TLAs) was running spies against the Trump team in early 2016.
  3. The FBI grossly abused the FISA system to spy on Trump himself before the election.
  4. The behavior of the LE/security agencies after the 2016 election shows that they were fully opposed to Trump and his agenda and willing to subvert—minimally—the spirit of our constitutional order if not commit outright sedition against it.

So, make your own applications. I have made mine. I won’t be voting any harderer.

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