Congressman Thomas Massie identifies as a Republican. I don’t really care how he identifies for the purposes of winning elections. He is clearly the most libertarian member actively in congress. It is also no accident that all of the most libertarian members of congress are consistently from the Republican party.
Massie is part of a tiny fraction of politicians that in the last 10 years have included Ron Paul, Justin Amash, and himself. There have been a handful of others that lean libertarian on a few issues, but that trio pretty much sums up any sentiment of real restriction on government overreach.
The congressman has also been absolutely crushing it regarding the COVID stuff in light of the vaccines. His technical and educational expertise in looking at the actual data in the studies has been crucial in his ability to highlight the absolute absurdity of nearly all policies.
Nobody is perfect, though.
Massie has been pretty loud in trying to advocate for active duty service members not being forced to receive the vaccine. His arguments have been good in terms of science. The demographics of people comprising the ranks of our service members are simply not at risk of the virus. They are virtually immune from hospitalization and death.
Further, with the demographic makeup of the military largely being 17-35 year olds, and majority male, they are likely at an elevated risk for myocarditis related to the vaccine than their civilian counterparts.
Still, with my experience of being in the military and even as a medic, the purposes of the vaccine programs are farther reaching than simply stopping disease. What we referred to as the medical readiness of a unit is really about the fighting power. It is about the ability to maximize the percentage of the force that is able to continue a fight with the enemy.
Most warfare is fought on a logistical basis. Entire campaigns were lost in marshes or in frozen tundras when disease would strike a force. Our own American beginnings in the revolution were battling smallpox. Logistical chains are frequently attacked to keep provisions and ammunition from reaching the troops that are pinned down by enemy fire to further reduce their capacity to continue the fight.
Much of chemical warfare is about reducing or incapacitating an enemy, even psychologically, and is less about actually killing vast numbers of people.
So from a military perspective, assessing the COVID vaccine is more nuanced.
If even 5% of a fighting force is placed on quarters or quarantine, and unable to continue fighting because of fevers, body aches, vomiting, diarrhea, or other symptoms, even if they don’t require immediate and attentive medical care, the capacity of their respective unit is diminished considerably. If avoidable, it is absolutely imperative to a military unit to diminish a semi-controllable threat as much as possible.
Further, the side effects from the vaccines are also likely to present in a controllable environment, whether in garrison or even in combat environments under more controllable circumstances. Knowing that a service member may have myocarditis as a side effect of the vaccine is preferable when in a non-deployed environment to the alternative of 3-10 days of incapacitating symptoms in a combat environment.
There are programs that provide care for service members that were harmed as a consequence of their service, such as reactions to mandatory vaccinations.
I really enjoy Congressman Massie and his efforts to protect members of his community and service members, but on this, I fear he is missing the forest for the trees. He is critically right on his resistance based on the evidence alone, but his lack of military experience seems to have reduced his capacity to assess the real world risk not of the virus, but of the impact of the virus on the fighting readiness of the world’s most impressive, and most expensive, military.
I hope that the tenor of all of these conversations can be deescalated. We need to allow for a lot more nuance and understanding in our rhetoric. Unfortunately, Massie is largely responding to the least nuanced effort by those regressive leftists who look for any excuse to grow the size and scope of government. That puts him in a precarious position of often being reactive and not proactive.
It is the unfortunate position of all liberty activists.
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