President Joe Biden is, yet again, proving to be the most authoritarian executive in the United States since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This past week, Biden's administration informed Americans that it would initiate an 'information' based program that will involve both door-to-door based inquiries into citizens' decisions on whether or not to take the COVID-19 vaccine and to work with SMS carriers to text individuals about vaccine information.
After suffering the effects of the pandemic-driven lockdown and mask mandates of the past year and a half, Biden and his administration are proposing yet another federal stomping on American privacy rights. The government told citizens that once the vaccine was made available, life would trend back to normalcy for them. It seems as if the exact opposite of normalcy at this point would be an employee or volunteer on behalf of the federal government knocking on a door and intimidating an individual to make the 'right' private medical decision. One would think that there would be a stronger sense of rebellion and refusal to cave to government rule at this point among citizens. Citizens were told lies by the nation's leading disease 'expert' that they would have to wear two masks and stay hidden in their homes for a year, but are now being told that they are so ignorant and misinformed that the government is going to have to make a trip out to their houses to be convinced to get a needle in their arm.
If this initiative is implemented, it is clearly a violation of civilian privacy rights to send federal officials to American homes. It is widely understood that the vaccine is a safe choice for a majority of Americans. However, it is essential to realize that it is a choice, not a requirement. One of the most critical rights Americans have by living in the United States is the right to make decisions that will affect themselves and themselves alone. If that is to receive the vaccine and brag about how safe it is, that is their right. If they opt not to take the vaccine due to concerns about its effects on their bodies, then that decision is just as equal to their right to choose to receive it.
One of the significant points of contention to this program may also be if it is even going to work. Do Biden and his cronies honestly believe that citizens in rural Appalachia are going to reveal a personal medical decision to some agent of the government, let alone get the vaccine because they told them to? Not only will this action likely not convince someone to make one decision or another, but it may also even cause justified apprehension solely because citizens feel as if their privacy rights are being violated.
The Biden Presidency is continuing to devalue the intellectual ability of everyday Americans to make the decisions that are right for them. From Kamala Harris believing that rural citizens cannot comprehend what it takes to obtain a voter ID to the administration thinking that the only way for some citizens to get a vaccine is to pressure them on their doorsteps, there is an apparent misunderstanding of how capable Americans genuinely are.
A lack of comprehension about how important individualism is in the country continues to be a consistent problem with this president and his administration. There is a sense of elitism among those who have taken pride in masks and vaccines, but now the federal government does not believe their citizens are intelligent or informed enough to make their calls. The precedent that this program sets potentially allows any presidential administration to disguise political motivations as 'information' based outreach efforts. Even if the program gets received with acclaim from a majority of citizens, it is not worth the potential outcomes of American privacy rights being thrown away for the sake of political talking points. Sacrificing individual privacy for the sake of potentially increasing the likelihood that an individual gets a vaccine does not seem worth it in terms of consequential longevity. Policies like Biden's proposed program are not one-time fixes to a problem.
As when the Patriot Act passed in 2001 after the September 11th attacks, administration officials have to make sure that policies get prevented from being utilized for ulterior motivations for a response-based solution to a single problem. The government can easily demonize them down the road. Those on the left have called conservatives 'fascist authoritarians' for nearly four years and prior. Hence, it is ironic how kindly they have taken to Biden's autocratic rule thus far.
The defiance to logic and disrespect to American privacy rights continue to be utilized by this administration, and it is likely going to get even worse.