In 2021, patriots bare their arms -- March 18, 2021 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Last year, wearing face masks divided Americans.

Now, a political gap has opened around the COVID-19 vaccine – with some Republicans saying they are hesitant, at least, to get the jab.

One in three Republicans say they will not get the vaccine when it becomes available, a CBS News poll found.

An Associated Press-NORC Center poll reported 42% of Republicans said they probably or definitely will not get the shot, compared with just 17% of Democrats.

Nearly half of those who supported President Donald Trump in 2020 said they would not get vaccinated, according to an NPR-Marist poll, and 59% of Republicans said in a Monmouth poll they’d either wait or wouldn’t get vaccinated at all.

Some say they are concerned about allergies and side effects, while others cited a distrust of the government, the polls reported.

“I don’t quite understand . . . this sort of macho thing about `I’m not gonna get the vaccine. I have a right as an American, my freedom not to do it,” President Joe Biden said in an ABC News interview that aired Wednesday. “Well, why don’t you be a patriot, protect other people?”

Anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers may think saying no is about personal freedom, but let’s call it what it is: selfish and unpatriotic.

The idea of a patriot has been usurped by some on the political right. Trump talked about forming a Patriot Party though has backed off. His supporters, sometimes armed, wear Patriot T-shirts and wave Patriot banners at “Patriot” rallies. Several political parties already have Patriot in their names.

It’s time to reclaim the word patriot, as Merriam-Webster defines it: “one who loves and supports his or her country.”  

Americans who revere the right to keep and bear arms should also bare their arms for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Getting vaccinated is a patriotic act because someone is taking  responsibility not only for their own health and wellbeing but for that of their community, state and nation.

More than 111 million Americans have received at least one dose, and 15% of adults are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Among those 65 and older, nearly 37% are fully vaccinated. But we still have a long way to go.

For the United States to reopen safely and fully, we need what’s called herd immunity and that means upwards of 75% of adults need to get vaccinated, health officials say.

Former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George Bush recently starred in a public service video showing themselves getting vaccinated and urged Americans to follow suit.

Trump and his wife got vaccinated before they left the White House in January but didn’t make their vaccinations known to the public until this month. He acknowledged on Fox News that many of his supporters don’t want to get vaccinated and he recommended, in a qualified way, they do so.

‘I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it. And a lot of those people voted for me, frankly,” he said. “But, you know, again, we have our freedoms, and we have to live by that, and I agree with that, also.

“But it’s a great vaccine, it’s a safe vaccine. And it’s something that works,” Trump said.

Getting vaccinated doesn’t mean you won’t get the virus, but it does mean the effects likely will be less and you’ll be less likely to need hospitalization. So, if patriotism doesn’t move you, how about enlightened self interest?

Or follow the lead of about two dozen men and women of faith who rolled up their sleeves at Washington National Cathedral the other day. Think of getting vaccinated as a form of prayer for a healthier, better country.

Biden has directed states to make every adult eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine no later than May 1. He also wants to make signing up for and getting vaccinations easier. The administration is expanding vaccine distribution, the number of vaccination sites and the ranks of professionals authorized to give the shots.

It’s an impressive effort aimed at getting as many people vaccinated as soon as possible.

But the effort will succeed only if people -- patriots -- bare their arms.

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Justice takes the long view -- April 24, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

At a party, I ran into a friend who retired a few months ago after a stellar journalism career in Washington.   

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“I’m still trying to figure out how to be retired,” he said. “I start every morning going over what I don’t need to do that day.” No commute downtown…no speed-reading the newspaper…no worries that something is taking too long, he said.  

This prize-winning journalist looked sheepish, as if he’d been put out to pasture instead of liberated.

In America, you’re nobody unless you’re crazy busy. And that’s crazy wrong.

Learning to be retired shouldn’t mean learning to be obsolete. Consider the retirement of John Paul Stevens. You may have caught the former Supreme Court justice, who just turned 94, on the media interview circuit. He’s a soft-spoken gentleman who favors bow ties and civility in an age of the rant. His new book is “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.”

Nominated to the court by Republican President Gerald Ford in 1975, Stevens became one of the court’s most reliable liberals. He resigned four years ago after nearly 35 years on the bench and wrote a memoir.

After taking time to read newspapers and other publications and to reflect on the court’s rulings when he was in the minority, Stevens turned in his latest book to where he thinks the court has gone wrong. He makes the case for change through an almost impossible route, amending the Constitution.

His proposals on the death penalty, guns, campaign finance and gerrymandering are making waves. But Stevens concedes that none is likely to become part of the Constitution soon; eventually, maybe. Give him credit for taking the long view.

His book began to take shape after the shooting massacre of school children in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, he told Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker.

“I read a newspaper story that said the federal database of criminal records might be incomplete because of a decision of the Supreme Court,” Stevens said. The court had ruled in 1997 that the federal government could not make states participate in background checks for gun sales.

“I thought if that decision might be responsible for a situation like the one in Newtown, they ought to change it. That got me to thinking that there had to be other rules that ought to be changed,” Stevens told Toobin.

Stevens proposes allowing Congress to force states to participate in background checks. He would limit the right to bear arms by adding five words to the Second Amendment: “when serving in the militia.”

The revised Second Amendment would read: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms when serving in the militia shall not be infringed.

“Emotional claims that the right to possess deadly weapons is so important that it is protected by the federal Constitution distort intelligent debate about the wisdom of particular aspects of proposed legislation designed to minimize the slaughter caused by the prevalence of guns in private hands,” Stevens writes.

Stevens still holds the admirable idea that the primary duty of someone in public office is “to make impartial decisions, not motivated by personal profit or personal gain or advantage” to his or her political party.

When he read a newspaper story about a Maryland redistricting plan in 2011 that benefited Democrats, he was incensed. In an interview on Scotusblog.com, Stevens called the redistricting plan “outrageously unconstitutional.”

He proposes to prohibit gerrymandering -- legislators drawing state and congressional districts with the goal of boosting the political strength of the party in power.

“It doesn’t take a genius,” Stevens told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, to see that the shapes of some congressional and state legislative districts are fishy.

Reading and reflecting require time. They’re the first things we throw overboard in our multi-tasking lives and the last we retrieve when daily pressures relent.

Working or retired, we all could benefit from thinking about the country we want. Whether you agree or disagree with Stevens, his ideas deserve the same serious thought he has given them and intelligent debate.  

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.