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By David M. GreenwaldExecutive Editor

Since the start of the pandemic, issues of government and health based restrictions have been framed by thoseespecially on the right, though not exclusivelyas an issue of freedom and rights. The argument goes that the individual and not the government should determine issues like masking, social distancing, and the like.

That issue has been amplified severalfold with the issue of vaccinations and whether or to what extent government and/or employers can mandate them.

In this piece I will argue that, while there are issues of freedom and rights embedded into this debate, for the most part and this extends well beyond the realm of COVID, we have misconstrued the issue of freedom way too narrowly.

When people yell freedom in this society, most often they are thinking along narrow self-interested lines. I want the freedom to do what I want.

The problem is that the government cannot operate along those lines of freedom. The government generally thinks not in terms of freedom but in terms of rights. Allowing someone to exercise their rights is relatively straightforward. Where government exists, however, is at the point where rights conflictgovernment has a responsibility to arbitrate and weigh on situations where my rights conflict with yours.

Many people yelling freedom forget this fact. The government has the obligation in my view of not only arbitration in the conflict of rights, but ensuring that the laws, to the extent possible, offer equal protection.

We may often think of freedom versus safetythe but reality is that safety is another way of designating other peoples rights. You may have the right to run down the street. But when you run into the street, you are putting other peoples rights in jeopardynot only their freedom of movement but also their freedom to live.

So the government preemptively steps in to create a set of rules that we follow. So we have traffic laws that prescribe and proscribe movements and govern when and where pedestrians can cross roadways and which laws that drivers have to obey to create as safe of an environment as possible.

What determines those laws? In part, community standards. But in part, a risk assessment.

Let us use speed limit as a case example here. In most places there are laws governing the maximum speed. Those laws generally allow people to drive at a faster rate of speed on the open road than on narrow and crowded city streets where there are more likely to be pedestrians and traffic controls.

Speed limits are limits on freedom. Thats one way to look at it. But another way is it is the governments decision to arbitrate between competing rights. My freedom of movement is circumscribed by your need to be able to safely move from point A to point B.

How does the government determine speed limits? A lot of it is based on risk assessment. The faster you go, the more freedom you have to determine your own safe rate of speed. But we know from studies, the faster you go the more likely driver error or roadway conditions are to create hazards, and so we weigh freedom against risk and arrive at a somewhat subjective limit for upper speed. That can vary state to state and also by location, but at the end of the day, risk assessment guides it.

In general, in the non-economic realm, I tend to be more libertarian. In fact, I generally consider myself a civil libertarian. I oppose government limits on free speech, think that most drugs should be legalized and, if not, decriminalized. I think things like sex work should be legalized but regulated.

I am more libertarian on things like gun laws than many on the left.

But I have a hard time understanding the freedom dimension to reasonable regulations with regard to COVID.

The problem again with COVID is that regulations are not about individual liberty exclusively. For example, if COVID were such that the precautions only impacted your own healththen by all means take whatever risks you want.

Let us take smoking as a good example here. If someone wants to smoke, that puts their health at risk. I am fine with that (we can debate the extent to which society should have to pay the bill for cancer treatment or the extent to which it is fair that we have to pay higher health insurance premiums to mitigate that risk, but thats a slightly different question).

But most places determined that you may have the right to smoke by yourself outside, but smoking can also impact others. Second hand smoke poses a health risk, and so most indoor places in most states have now forbidden ityou used to be able to smoke on planes, in restaurants, at bars, now you cant.

Wearing a mask is pretty much the same issue. When you dont wear a mask, you actually put other peoples health at risk, not your own.

Government therefore has a compelling interest in mandating masks to prevent disease spread.

I have heard people argue that if you want to live in fear, thats fine, but they dont choose to. But the mask issue is more complicated. If it again were merely about you avoiding getting sick if you didnt wear a mask, there would be a more compelling argument. But the mask issue is actually the opposite, it prevents you from spreading the virus to others. Thats a little different.

Vaccination, of course, is more complicated. You are not talking about a temporary and passive use of masks. You are talking about whether the government has an interest to compel an individual to inject something into their body.

I would argue that they dont.

However, freedom to act is not freedom to live without consequences or choices.

The government in my view, does have a compelling interest in regulating who can operate in the public realm and create increased levels of risk. Therefore the government I think has the ability to regulate who can enter public buildings, it has the ability to regulate who can go to restaurants, bars, and gyms, and it has the ability to weigh your freedom to not vaccinate against societys freedom to incur undo risk at entering the public realm.

Bottom line, I think the government does have the right to place restrictions on those who CHOOSE not to vaccinate. They are making a choice.

I have seen people say that they can choose not to wear a mask or not vaccinate and if I dont like it, I can choose not to leave my home.

Sorry, but we both have equal freedoms here. Our rights conflict. And there when rights conflict, the government has the duty to arbitrate those conflicts and they do so by managing risk. Right now in the middle of a pandemic, the government interest in protecting health and safety outweighs other factors.

When that risk is reducedas we have seen at various timesgovernment can and will remove those restrictions.

Read more from the original source:
Commentary: We Have Misconstrued Freedom in the Fight against COVID - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer's campaign is in a dispute with state officials over whether he can be listed as the city's retired mayor on the ballot for the recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Each candidate is listed with a job title or other descriptor, but they are not allowed to use the word former. Faulconer's campaign requested he be listed as San Diego's retired mayor, which state officials are now disputing, Faulconer spokesman John Burke said. He left the office in 2020, and referencing his prior role would help boost his name identification.

Burke said the campaign plans to sue the Secretary of State's office.

"It defies common sense that KevinFaulconerwouldnt be allowed to use retired San Diego Mayor as his ballot designation, where he was elected and re-elected, leaving office only at the end of last year," Burke said in a written statement. "This is not fair to voters who should be given accurate information as to who the candidates for this recall actually are. Our campaign is suing the Secretary of State to ensure that this is rectified."

Faulconer isn't the only candidate upset with the list of 41 candidates released Saturday by the state. YouTube creator Kevin Paffrath said he planned to sue to get his YouTube nickname on the ballot.

And, conservative talk radio host Larry Elder was left off the ballot because state officials say he submitted incomplete tax returns, a requirement to run. Elder maintains he should be included and says he'll go to court to get his name on the ballot.

The list of candidates includes 21 Republicans and eight Democrats, one Libertarian, nine independents and two Green Party members. The list has a range of candidates from the anonymous to the famous, including an entertainer known for putting herself on Los Angeles billboards in the 1980s and others with eye-catching names, like deputy sheriff Denver Stoner, and Nickolas Wildstar, who lists himself as a musician/entrepreneur/father.

Also listed is Olympian-turned-reality-TV-star Caitlyn Jenner, who was reportedly in Australia filming a reality show at the time the list was released, though she tweeted Friday that she and her campaign team are "in full operation."

Voters will be sent a ballot with two questions: Should Newsom be recalled, and who should replace him. If more than half of voters say yes to the first question, then whoever on the list of potential replacements gets the most votes is the new governor of the nations most populous state. With numerous candidates and no clear front-runner, its possible the someone could win with less than 25% of the votes.

Ballots will start going out next month in the mail, and the official election date is Sept. 14.

Read the original here:
Faulconer Campaign in Dispute With State Over Title on Recall Ballot - NBC San Diego

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Californias next governor could be a retired homicide detective, a marijuana reform advocate, or an Olympic champion.

Or, a former Mayor of San Francisco who went on to win the Governor's office a few years ago.

The state on Saturday released a list of 41 people who filed the required paperwork to run in the Sept. 14 recall election that could remove Gov. Gavin Newsom. The lineup includes 21 Republicans, eight Democrats, one Libertarian, nine independents, and two Green Party members.

Voters may be familiar with several names on the list, including Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympian turned reality TV personality; and John Cox, the Orange County businessman. Other, perhaps lesser-known candidates include Democrat Kevin Paffrath, 29, a YouTube financial advisor; Libertarian Jeff Hewitt, 68, a Riverside County supervisor, and Republican Sam Gallucci, 60, a former executive at the financial management firm PeopleSoft and current pastor at an Oxnard church.

See all 41 candidates: Whos Running In Newsom Recall? Politicians, Activists, Californians Of All Stripes

The number of candidates is smaller than some analysts expected; predictions at one point ran up to 100. That could be a setback for recall supporters who had hoped for a large, prominent field to attract voters for the first question of whether or not Newsom should be recalled.

If that question fails, the recall is over and Newsom remains in office, mooting the candidates on the second ballot.

A certified list the one voters will see will be released Wednesday and changes are possible.

What questions do you have about Southern California?

Read more from the original source:
Here's Who's Running For CA Governor In The Upcoming Recall Election, So Far - LAist

By Rich Moniak

On Monday, oral arguments were heard on an election lawsuit ripe with irony. It seeks to invalidate Alaskas new voting law for statewide offices that narrowly passed last November. Proposition 2 created a nonpartisan primary that advances the top four vote-getters to a ranked-choice competition in the general election.

The plaintiffs are Kenneth Jacobus, a registered Republican and the attorney who filed the lawsuit; Scott Kohlhaas, a member of the Alaska Libertarian Party; The Alaskan Independence Party; and Bob Bird, AIPs chairman.

The complaint Jacobus submitted describes how the non-partisan primary stripped all three parties of their ability to control the selection of candidates in Alaskas elections. In doing so, he argues, Proposition 2 violates their rights to free political association and creates a system in which political parties are rendered irrelevant.

Now Im not a fan of our two-party duopoly, but the Alaskan Independence Party and Alaska Libertarian Party are already irrelevant. Combined, they account for only 4.3% of all registered voters in Alaska. In 2020, the two parties nominated a total of six candidates for 32 statewide offices. They all lost by huge margins. Their record for the prior decade is just as bad.

If their candidates cant do any better in a nonpartisan primary, then Proposition 2 does nothing more than reschedule their embarrassing showing from November to August.

Kohlhaas has personal experience in the art of political irrelevance. He lost two state House races by more than 40 points. And in his 2014 bid to be our U.S. senator, he finished third with just 14% of the vote in his partys primary. Its worth noting that the winner of that got under 4% in the general election.

Before that, Kohlhaas filed lawsuits against the state for refusing to certify two ballot initiatives he proposed. Both were about giving Alaskans the choice to secede from the union. Jacobus, who represented him both times, took his appeals to the state Supreme Court where they were unanimously rejected.

Their record as a team suggests this is just another a crank lawsuit. Which is probably why the GOP opted out. But because it serves the GOPs desire to limit who can appear on the general election ballot, its leadership is hoping Kohlhass and Jacobus prevail this time.

The irony here is thethe Alaskan Independence Party and Alaska Libertarian Party are to the political right of the GOP. So, if the court strikes down Proposition 2, general election candidates from both parties will continue syphon off a small percentage of conservative voters. Twice in the past 10 years, the loss of those votes resulted in a narrow defeat for Republican House candidates.

Because the top four vote-getters advance to the general election though, its unlikely theyll be spoilers in the primary. Indeed, as the plaintiffs argue, all four are likely to be Democrats or Republicans.

But with the GOP becoming little more than a cultish allegiance to former President Donald Trump, it doesnt want a principled Republican like Sen. Lisa Murkowski on the general election ballot.

Murkowski earned Trumps wrath a year ago for agreeing with the blistering criticism of him by his former Secretary of Defense. And again after she voted to convict him during his second impeachment trial.

Murkowski has got to go! Trump said last month when he endorsed Kelly Tshibaka for the Senate.

Tshibaka thinks its time to replace Lisa with an Alaskan who is not a Washington, D.C., insider politico. And claims to have a fire in my heart to rebuild Alaska.

Those are amusing statements coming from a Harvard Law graduate who spent 17 years climbing the bureaucratic ladder in Washington, D.C., before returning to Alaska in 2019.

But rather than recruit a candidate with a real Alaskan resum, the GOP bowed to Trumps preference and grievances by endorsing her last week.

Tshibaka would probably beat Murkowski in a traditional primary because the voices of nonpartisan and nonaffiliated Alaskans are irrelevant. But they outnumber the combined registration of all three conservative parties 2-to-1. If the courts uphold Proposition 2, theyll help Murkowski finish in the top four.

And if she wins election, the GOP leaders who bet on Trump and Tshibaka will be free to associate with their party while finding a place alongside Kohlhaas in ranks of the politically irrelevant.

Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector. Columns, My Turns and Letters to the Editor represent the view of the author, not the view of the Juneau Empire. Have something to say? Heres how to submit a My Turn or letter.

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Opinion: The parties to political irrelevance - Juneau Empire

There is a type of all-natural Instagram influencer who, at first glance, appears to be all about living her best, healthy life. She is an avid proponent of meditation, clean eating, yoga, and a vague form of Asian spirituality. Her approach to life and health is holistic. And her social media feeds are a whiplash of content, ranging from the benefits of gua sha and ayurvedic diets to her skepticism about the effectiveness of masks and vaccines.

Over the past year of the pandemic, the wellness space a blanket term used to describe practitioners and promoters of noninstitutionalized Western medicine, from crystal healers to yoga teachers has grown rife with politically motivated misinformation on QAnon, Covid-19, the prevalence of child trafficking, and election integrity.

Media coverage has largely centered on these New Age-type influencers as peddlers of a libertarian, anti-science ideology that refuses masks, social distancing, and vaccines. Californias yoga, wellness and spirituality community has a QAnon problem, read a recent Los Angeles Times headline. Wellness influencers are spreading QAnon conspiracies about the coronavirus, declared Mother Jones. In March, the Washington Post wrote about QAnons unexpected roots in New Age spirituality.

These articles explore a concerning facet of American life, a phenomenon researchers call conspirituality, or how conspiracy theories have found a home in spiritual circles that are skeptical of Western medicine and established institutions. The observations stop short of implying that certain practices, like yoga, are a direct pathway to radicalization. Blame is generally assigned to the wellness communities where these fringe, anti-science ideas comfortably fester. Still, while most coverage identifies the prevalence of these dangerous, unfounded beliefs accurately, there is often little context on the wellness spaces relationship with Orientalism (or the Wests tendency to romanticize, stereotype, and flatten Asian cultures) and libertarian individualism.

For decades, many health and medicinal practices have been exported from Asia to the West, including yoga, ayurveda, reiki, and aspects of traditional Chinese medicine such as cupping, gua sha, and acupuncture. Such traditions are often categorized under the alternative medicine or New Age umbrella vague terms that conflate different philosophical and medical systems into a uniquely Western mishmash of ideas. The nuance and history of these traditions, however, dont exactly get first billing when they go viral.

Cultural exports are a complex, inevitable result of globalization, and cultural appropriation doesnt always carry negative effects. As Asian-inspired practices and treatments edge toward the mainstream, the problem isnt necessarily appropriation. Its what appropriation can produce: an Orientalist perspective toward non-Western practices that can be misrepresented to further a political agenda.

The process by which this happens is likely familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of Gwyneth Paltrows Goop, although this type of appropriation predates the brand by decades. It usually begins with an influential (usually white) Westerner who encounters a practice with origins in East or South Asia. The person integrates the tradition into their lifestyle, publicly touts its benefits, and helps disseminate a version of the practice to their own community. (Such was the case for acupuncture in 1971, after a New York Times reporter wrote about the benefits of his treatment in China.)

Its New Age capitalism at work: A robust system of knowledge is taken apart piecemeal, divorced from any philosophical or religious roots, and transfigured into a commodity, something that can be bought and sold to improve consumers lives. For example, gua sha is a traditional Chinese treatment that has recently gone viral online. It is intended to be a scraping treatment for a persons back and body, rather than the face. Yet, the beauty industry markets gua sha stones and jade rollers, another Chinese-inspired facial tool, as beautifying gimmicks a way to contour ones jawline and mimic the results of a facelift instead of contextualizing their traditional use.

Social media has, for better or worse, popularized these once-niche practices to a broader American audience. And the pandemic has facilitated this consumer interest. Stuck at home in the event of a novel disease, millions of people took to fretting over their health and well-being as the American health care system buckled. People turned to yoga, meditation, and essential oils, in addition to spiritual practices such as astrology, reiki-inspired crystal healing, and manifestation. Amid this social upheaval, some gravitated toward the alternative and sought out unorthodox theories to explain their uncertain reality.

The thing about the spiritual East or the Orient is that theres a history of Westerners cherry-picking customs, traditions, and practices to serve their needs, that they can tie to a particular political agenda, said Shreena Gandhi, an assistant professor of religion at Michigan State University who researches yoga and its history of appropriation. There are multiple aspects of Orientalism at play here. Theres the romantic approach to Eastern wellness and alternative therapies, and its hysterical counterpart, which is fearful or distrustful of traditional beliefs.

Nazi leaders, for one, were proponents of yoga and its spiritual philosophy; they were obsessed with purifying and elevating an individuals body as a microcosm of the nation-state. Modern-day wellness communities appear much more focused on the individual (without mentioning the state), but according to Matthew Remski, journalist and co-host of the Conspirituality podcast, there are lingering fascist undertones in New Age beliefs.

New-Agers are not secretly Nazis, Remski wrote in a four-part blog on yoga and conspirituality. Its more like: fascist ideas of the perfected body and earth [have] generated enduring cultural memes for holism, embodied spirituality, and health. Those memes, sanitized of their explicit politics, carry jagged edges of perfectionism and paranoia about impurity. And that double message your body is divine but it is also under attack has become standard in the commodification of yoga and wellness.

Its common for believers of conspirituality to reference South or East Asian religions and teachings. It lends to the appearance of gravitas, history, and authority, Remski told me. Its a positive Orientalism that has nothing to do with the actual practice or history involved.

In February, for example, a holistic facialist in Miami Beach made an Instagram post suggesting that wearing a mask blocks the flow of Lung Qi, borrowing language from traditional Chinese medicine on qi, or energy, that flows through the human body. This claim, while false, relies on a Western tendency to approach Eastern medicine erroneously, from a universal perspective. Its a type of medical Orientalism that exoticizes non-Western practices and caters to New Age notions of mystical, natural healing.

The onset of the coronavirus in Asia has polarized perceptions of Eastern medicine and alternative therapies, hardening a sense of scientific dualism in Asia and abroad that people, particularly its practitioners, are either pro- or anti-science. (Government officials in India, for example, have received backlash for encouraging the treatment of Covid-19 primarily with traditional medicine.) At the same time, souring US-China relations have fomented sinophobic distrust and paranoia toward Asian Americans, regardless of their citizenship status and ethnic heritage. Some believed these attitudes were fueled by Asias, specifically Chinas, initial association with the coronavirus outbreak.

It becomes political. Its easy to associate anyone who promotes or practices Chinese medicine as a mouthpiece for the Chinese Communist Party, said Michael Stanley-Baker, a historian of Chinese medicine at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. My opinion is that biomedicine and scientific research is good and authoritative. That shouldnt discredit other knowledge systems. Chinese medicine is a systematic, robust form of knowledge that isnt static. Its not anything goes, and it certainly isnt random.

The professionalization of certain fields of alternative medicine, like acupuncture and ayurveda, has standardized such practices in the West to an extent. But these treatments have plenty of skeptics, and are often dismissed as useless at best and harmful at worst. At the same time, this standardization process in the US has marginalized and even led to arrests of Asian American practitioners, argued Tyler Phan, a lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, in his doctoral thesis on American Chinese medicine.

Meanwhile, todays wellness industry attracts a demographic of predominantly white, middle-class adherents. According to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, roughly six in 10 American adults, regardless of their religious affiliations, believe in at least one New Age belief, such as psychics, astrology, and spiritual energy in objects.

This tendency toward the spiritual, according to Remski, is perhaps a replacement for community. He attributes it to a cultural emptiness at the heart of alternative spirituality and modern-day yoga, which coincides with the breakdown of community and health care in the US. As a result, the modern yoga studio and by extension, the greater wellness world became devoid of politics. Its siloed outlook focused on an individuals religious potential and spiritual well-being at the expense of the collective. What appears to be countercultural then becomes quite similar to libertarianism, Remski said. That spiritually libertarian attitude has permeated yoga culture through its boom cycle.

And so long as conspiracy theories persist, the redpilling will continue on Instagram, in yoga studios, and in other wellness-related spaces. Yet, according to MSUs Gandhi, there is some hysteria surrounding the stereotype of a wealthy, yoga-practicing mother who refuses to vaccinate her kids. Its not only wellness and yoga practitioners who believe in this ideology, she said. Its more than just yoga classes. QAnon is an explicitly political conspiracy rooted in white supremacy.

This hysteria, Gandhi added, is reminiscent of the attitudes that fueled the yellow peril of decades past. This sentiment isnt entirely explicit, but the fixation toward flawed, New Age-y notions of wellness often lumps together alternative, Eastern therapies and practitioners into one broad group. As a result, these practices become collectively vilified and politicized for indoctrinating vulnerable Americans.

This conflation is not only unhelpful, but also dismissive of the work and history of non-Western knowledge systems that are valuable and complex in their own right. It also makes it harder for authoritative figures to debunk false information. There should be a nuanced middle ground, Stanley-Baker argued, where various types of medicinal practices can coexist and supplement one another.

There needs to be a conversation as to what constitutes robust knowledge in Eastern and Chinese medicine, he concluded. We need to differentiate the Orientalists and the Goop wellness influencers and enthusiasts from serious and respectful practitioners.

See the rest here:
The yoga and wellness worlds have a conspiracy problem - Vox.com