As H1N1 Hits Kenyon, A Debate on the Ethics of Vaccination

Late this summer, as we were all eagerly preparing our returns to campus, the Health Center sent an e-mail titled "Student with Influenza" to the student body. The meaning was clear from the title alone: the H1N1 influenza virus, colloquially known as swine flu, had arrived. A student was infected. Now, what were we to do? We got the usual advice: "wash your hands" and "cover your face when you sneeze," etc. But real help is on the way. According to information in an e-mail and on the College Web site, the H1N1 vaccine should be available to the campus this fall.

This sounds all well and good, right? Maybe not. It would be wise to stand back and look at the whole picture before succumbing to hysterics.

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Rethinking the "Good War"

On September 1, seventy years ago, Germany invaded Poland. And thus began the most destructive and deadly war in human history. Too few people, however, dare ask Why? or How? The orthodox view of World War II as the "Good War," as a war of Good versus Evil, has reached canonical status.

Patrick Buchanan provides us with the insight that, if not for British guarantees to Poland, the entire war could have been avoided. Justin Raimondo adds to Buchanan's observations: "...the Cold War would most definitely have been avoided. For Hitler was determined to destroy the hated Bolsheviks, and it was only US entry into the conflict – engineered by FDR, in alliance with the Brits, the Communists, and the left in general – that saved the "workers’ paradise" from Germany’s sword." And finally, Robert Higgs reminds us that "One is scarcely engaging in moral equivalence if one concludes that neither side represented 'the good guys.' There was plenty of evil to go around."

No historical event should be sacrosanct, including World War II.