B.C. Libertarian leader asks employers to grant party members “accommodation on vaccine mandate”

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      The B.C. provincial government now requires mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for health and public sectors workers under the pain of losing their jobs.

      One political party has taken a strong position against these vaccine mandates, and is actively defending its members.

      The leader of the B.C. Libertarian Party has been signing letters supporting requests by party members for “accommodation on the grounds of political belief with regard to the vaccine mandate”.

      Party leader Keith MacIntyre provided the Straight a template of the letter, which states four libertarian principles related to mandatory vaccination.

      The first principle states that “no individual or group is permitted to initiate the use of force or fraud against any other”.

      “This is the non-aggression principle, which all libertarians (regardless of party affiliation) share belief in,” MacIntyre explains in the letter.

      He continues, “Without the consent of both parties, any act of physical force by one party against another is considered aggression. This applies to murder just as it does to an unwelcome slap on the back.”

      Hence, “The act of piercing a person's skin with a needle is also an act of force, or aggression, if consent has not been provided.”

      The second principle states that the “universal natural rights to life, liberty, property, expression, and the peaceful pursuit of happiness are essential to the preservation of civil society”.

      MacIntyre explains that the “most important such right each person has is an absolute property right in their own body”.

      “This means that no one may lay hands on another person’s body, even to administer a medical treatment to them, without their consent,” he states.

      The third principle asserts that the “role of government is to protect and preserve such rights” as mentioned.

      “We believe that the proper role of government is limited to the protection of such individual, negative rights,” MacIntyre explains.

      “In other words,” he continues, “the government's monopoly on the legitimate use of force is valid if it is used only to prevent or punish acts of aggression, theft, assault, murder, and so on, against its citizens.”

      “Conversely, the government loses its legitimacy when it goes beyond this scope and tries to solve all or many of society's problems by using coercive measures, such as restricting the free movement of citizens who are not ill or issuing orders that deprive citizens of employment in order to achieve ‘public health’.”

      Moreover, “An employer mandating vaccines for all their employees amounts to placing societal goals or a notion of public good above the right of individuals to decide what is in their own medical best interest.”

      And fourth, citizens have the “right to defend and be defended from those persons or institutions that seek to diminish any of the above principles”.

      MacIntyre declares that vaccine mandates “make employees choose between a medical treatment that could be harmful, and the loss of employment, they represent a violation of property rights”.

      “We believe that every person has the right to defend themselves against these threats and to call on institutions such as the courts to assist them in that defense,” the B.C. Libertarian leader states.

      In a phone interview, MacIntyre told the Straight that his party is growing in membership, because people are seeking alternatives to established parties on the left and right side of political spectrum.

      “Everytime the government fires a worker or takes a business away or forces the closure of a business, it wakes more people up to how much the government actually can harm them,” the libertarian said.

      MacIntyre added: “I often say that this is the first time in a lot of people’s lives that they’ve noticed how much the government can harm them. They’ve [government] been doing it their whole lives; they [people] just mostly don’t feel it, but they [government] have so many ways to coerce and force us to doing what they want.”

      MacIntyre noted that none of the established parties are standing for people’s liberties.

      “We are the voice of freedom,” MacIntyre said.

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