VACCINATION

BBC Photo: Child exposed to measles in a Toronto doctor's office.



The Australian government has shown one way to teach a population that ignorant individualism in a densely populated world is a recipe for disaster. It has announced the elimination of welfare benefits to those who do not vaccinate their children. This is a bold and intelligent move in a democracy whose history is peopled with victims of bad British government policy.

 

Illegal immigration, like refusal of parents to vaccinate, is another area in which the Australian government has put its foot down in the face of individualist exploitation of resources by ignorant people who bring more need to society than benefit. Countries which have developed through the hard work and education of their societies are waking up to the tsunami of unskilled opportunists knocking at their borders daily. The majority of these are not hapless refugees. They are people fleeing the responsibility of building their own nations through hard choices and hard work. They are plotters and schemers.

 

The myth of the lawful and acculturating immigrant who hopes to adopt the values of a better society has been ruptured by the deterioration of urban street life in places where immigration has gone uncontrolled. International drug cartels have exploited open borders to set up violent drug gangs in once peaceful environments. Wandering troupes of homeless Central American men sleep on sidewalks in my own neighborhood nightly. Many of them too inebriated to walk straight, let alone work hard.

 

Refusal by more educated parents to inoculate their children is a symptom of dysfunctional individualism in affluent societies. Parents with autistic children would rather blame vaccines than take a hard look at the science and their own responsibility in bringing that child into the world. It must be the place of government to take a stand for the benefit of the many in the face of the few who would bring on old plagues to satisfy their inability to cope with the consequences of chosen reproduction. It is also the place of government and parents to educate children about sex, reproduction and disease prevention.

 

Globalism has yet to meet its potential to educate and move humanity to a healthier, less crowded, less violent world. Australia attempts to preserve a high quality of life while surrounded by overpopulated neighbors, mired in poverty, lack of education and dysfunctional religion. It is a goal long lost here in the U.S. and many other developed countries, who have surrendered to an ideology of denial, encapsulated in the "it's all good" mantra.