Something must be in the air. It’s not just the cold weather or the flu. It’s the virus of bad advice, and it’s coming from the CDC and Freedom from Religion Foundation. These viruses are making their way into Alabama right now.
First, the CDC. Not the Bee (which reports real news that you thought would be satire but is actually real life) reports that yesterday, “[a] bunch of unelected officials over at the CDC just voted—unanimously—that your child take the experimental COVID-19 vaccine in order to attend public schools.”
Say what now?
Because I love my son, I’ve got four words for the CDC: Over my dead body.
This is needless, ridiculous and dangerous. It is needless, because children do not suffer from severe COVID symptoms like adults do. As Ben Shapiro put it: if the virus isn’t going to result in hospitalization or death, then why do we care? Kids catch colds all the time, and we don’t force them to take experimental vaccines for it. We shouldn’t with COVID either.
It's also dangerous. As 1819 News has reported, we’re seeing a rise in blood clots that appear to be caused by COVID vaccines. Also, myocarditis and other heart-related complications have been on the rise, especially in young people, after they get a COVID vaccine. The needlessness for the vaccine among children, combined with the dangerous side effects, renders the whole thing ridiculous.
The good news is that the CDC and the Biden Administration are not likely to succeed if they try to implement this vote directly, since the Supreme Court struck down the CDC’s eviction mandate and Biden’s OSHA mandate last term. But what it will come down to is whether Alabama has the political will to resist if the feds make the receipt of federal funds conditioned on vaccinating our kids. If it comes to that, groups like ACLL will do our best to get the mandate struck down in court, and I think our chances of success are good. But if we can’t, then it will be time for our representatives and governor to decide which is more important: our kids or federal bribes.
Second, the FFRF. As 1819 News reported yesterday, the Freedom from Religion Foundation sent a memo to multiple states, including Alabama, warning us not to get too excited about the HUGE win for religious freedom in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. As I wrote back in June, Kennedy was the single-biggest Establishment Clause decision of our lifetimes. In this case, the Supreme Court not only stood up for Coach Kennedy’s right to pray at the 50-yard-line after games, but it completely threw out the erroneous precedents that it had been using for decades. Now, the Establishment Clause is to be interpreted in light of our history. Consequently, what matters is whether the government is trying to coerce someone into worshiping against their will, not whether the government offended someone by acknowledging that God exists and that we are a religious people.
Yet the FFRF’s memo describes Kennedy’s holding as “exceedingly narrow.” As usual, they’re lying. Kennedy threatens the FFRF’s entire business model, because it took away the tools they had been using for years to shake down local governments that didn’t know any better. After Kennedy, the FFRF is on life-support, and its chances are not looking good.
Now the kernel of truth they worked into their memo is that Kennedy did not overrule two key Supreme Court decisions about prayer in schools, one of which prohibited a rabbi from praying at a public high school graduation, and the other of which prohibited school-sanctioned prayer over a loudspeaker at high-school football games. Thus, schools need to be careful while approaching those two issues. But what the FFRF is not telling our schools is that those two decisions, like the FFRF itself, are on life-support as well. If the FFRF were foolish enough to sue in a situation like that, there is a very good chance that the lawsuit could backfire and result in the overruling of those two decisions. If that happened, the FFRF itself would be done.
So to absolutely nobody’s surprise, the CDC and FFRF are giving bad advice. Fortunately, their advice will be of little consequence—if we have the courage to live up to our motto: “We dare defend our rights.” If we have the courage to be assertive, our kids will be safe, and we can acknowledge God freely despite the threats of obsolete leftist trolls.
Matt Clark is the President of the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty, a conservative nonprofit law firm that fights for limited government, free markets, and strong families in the courts. His column appears every Friday in 1819 News. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com.
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