"We've reached the point where state actors can penetrate rectums and vaginas, where judges can order forced catheterizations, and where police and medical personnel can perform scans, enemas and colonoscopies without the suspect's consent. And these procedures aren't to nab kingpins or cartels, but people who at worst are hiding an amount of drugs that can fit into a body cavity. In most of these cases, they were suspected only of possession or ingestion. Many of them were innocent... But these tactics aren't about getting drugs off the street... These tactics are instead about degrading and humiliating a class of people that politicians and law enforcement have deemed the enemy."—Radley Balko, The Washington Post

Freedom is never free.

There is always a price—always a sacrifice—that must be made in order to safeguard one's freedoms.

Where that transaction becomes more complicated is when one has to balance the rights of the individual with the needs of the community.

Philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau envisioned the social contract between the individual and a nation's rulers as a means of finding that balance. Invariably, however, those in power grow greedy, and what was intended to be a symbiotic relationship with both sides benefitting inevitably turns into a parasitic one, with a clear winner and a clear loser.

We have seen this vicious cycle play out over and over again throughout the nation's history.

Just look at this COVID-19 pandemic: the whole sorry mess has been so overtly politicized, propagandized, and used to expand the government's powers (and Corporate America's bank balance) that it's difficult at times to distinguish between what may be legitimate health concerns and government power grabs.

After all, the government has a history of shamelessly exploiting national emergencies for its own nefarious purposes. Terrorist attacks, mass shootings, civil unrest, economic instability, pandemics, natural disasters: the government has been taking advantage of such crises for years now in order to gain greater power over an unsuspecting and largely gullible populace.

This COVID-19 pandemic is no different.

Yet be warned: we will all lose if this pandemic becomes a showdown between COVID-19 vaccine mandates and the right to bodily integrity.