The growth of the federal government’s power over the last two years is problematic. Increasingly, lawmakers are using the pandemic as an excuse to control every aspect of citizens’ lives. It now seems that they want to further control and access the health records of their citizens. The U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 550, the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021, on November 30, 2021. The bill, sponsored by U.S. Representative Ann Kuster (D-NH), is a complex idea that will create a network of computers and databases capable of further tracking immunization for the local, state, and federal governments. It had 14 cosponsors — 10 Democrats, including Illinois’ Lauren Underwood, and 4 Republicans. 

The tracking of vaccines is not new to the United States. The Immunization Information System (IIS) was created in 1997 and operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). According to the CDC, the database is confidential, and that it monitors “populations-based” immunizations. In other words, as the IIS is currently structured, the CDC can only access information from Public Health Departments and clinicians to determine how many vaccines they have distributed, not who they have vaccinated. This information is typically used to analyze the distribution rate of vaccines. For example, the CDC can determine how many children were vaccinated against chickenpox in a given year, but they cannot determine which child was or was not vaccinated.

Citizens and some conservative lawmakers all voiced concerns that H.R. 550 will track individuals more closely and possibly lead to a database of vaccinated individuals. The bill allocates $400 million to create what has been called “improvements” to the IIS, making enforcement and implementation of vaccine mandates easier. The so-called improvements would include: 

• grants awarded to local and state public health departments and other agencies to expand information systems

• support for “real-time immunization record data exchange and reporting, to support rapid identification of immunization coverage gaps”

• “implementation of policies that facilitate complete population-level capture” (meaning everyone is added to the database)

• increase of computers and data servers available to public health departments and the CDC and to maintain those systems on an ongoing basis

• increases the authority of the CDC and public health departments

These are just a few of the policies that the bill would establish. Supporters of the bill, including U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), argue that the legislation restricts the amount of funding and provides greater privacy for health information. Crenshaw stated, “And so there was a Republican-led effort for this exact provision, to decrease the funding for it and ensure that if states take that money they have to make the data anonymous and only collect it at the population level so you can’t be tracked.” Representative Crenshaw fails to see the implications of creating a database that can track populations so precisely that it captures an entire population, say a county, and their vaccination rate in real-time. This tracking would indicate which cities or counties were the most resistant to vaccination and potentially lead to aggressive injunctions specified towards that population.

Another major problem with this bill is that although it does not create a direct database, it funds the creation of the needed technology to store such a database. Once this technological system is in place, it is a short jump for legislators to create a new bill that would implement a vaccine database using the pre-existing IIS computer database system.

The bill was most widely supported by the Democratic members of the U.S. House, with 214 voting yes and none voting no. Unfortunately, 80 Republicans also voted yes. In Illinois, three Republicans sided with the Democrats on the bill, including U.S. Representative Rodney Davis (R-Taylorville), Adam Kinzinger (R-Ottawa), and Darin LaHood (R-Peoria).

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to ask that they vote no on the Immunization Infrastructure Modernization Act of 2021. During the pandemic and subsequent fearmongering, we cannot lose sight of the freedoms that we should all hold so dear. It is up to each individual and their doctor to determine the best course of treatment, not federal bureaucrats. Surveillance from our government is intrusive and dangerous as it leads to further governmental control in our lives. 

You can also sign a petition with the non-profit organization Stand for Health Freedom, HERE. 

Continue to pray for those individuals who have been tragically affected by this pandemic. Also, pray for our leaders, country, and freedom as we struggle through these dark days.

By God’s grace, the American experiment has lasted for 232 years now, since the Constitution went into effect on April 30, 1789. Every political leader that is sworn in agrees to uphold the Constitution.

But now in our day of rampant political correctness, of Marxist revisionism, of “egg shell plaintiffs,” of “safe spaces,” of “hate speech” (which is often just the other guy’s opinion), even the Constitution has recently been labeled as “harmful.” It might offend someone.

Case in point. Recently, Ophelie Jacobson of Campus Reform approached students at the University of Florida to ask them what they think about the Constitution. Their responses, as seen in this video, were mostly negative.

Here were some of their comments on the U.S. Constitution:

• “Absolutely terrible. Needs to be redone immediately.”
• “I think it needs a lot more reform for the changes that happened since then.”
• “I think we just need to update it on like—more equality, equity, stuff like that.”
• It’s the product of “all old white men.”
• “It should have been made by a group of diverse people.”
• “The time period, you know, was rich, old white men; and that’s exactly what that document says and stands for and vouches for.”

No wonder so many of them were willing to sign a petition to abolish the Constitution!

Furthermore, even the keepers of the Constitution in Washington, D.C. have contributed to this negative view. On 9/24/21, The Federalist reported: “Over the summer, the National Archives issued ‘harmful content’ warnings on all its collections of online documents, including Founding-era documents like the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence.”

Why would they do this? The Federalist explains that the warnings “allegedly protect against documents that ‘reflect racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes; be discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more.’”

U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and U.S. Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) want the National Archives to remove these “harmful negative alerts” from our founding documents.

This is getting ridiculous. If these views prevail, the Marxist attempt in America to “tear it all down” and start over might well succeed. May it never be.

The Constitution has brought unparalleled political freedom and prosperity. Marxism has brought unparalleled misery and death. People don’t clamor to get into the Marxist countries like China or Cuba or Venezuela. But they do risk their lives to get into the United States. That’s not despite the Constitution and what it represents. It’s because of it.

But many forces today, because they love power (and often the perks that come with that power) are willing to undermine the Constitution, so they may gather unto themselves more control. This does not bode well for the future of our republic.

Thomas Sowell warns, “It doesn’t matter what rights you have under the Constitution, if the government can punish you for exercising those rights. And it doesn’t matter what limits the Constitution puts on government officials’ power, if they can exceed those limits without any adverse consequences.”

This point is reminiscent of a warning from the father of our country.

As Dr. Peter Lillback and I noted in our 2006 book, George Washington’s Sacred Fire, “Washington asserted that human depravity could ultimately destroy the Constitution, even with the checks and balances it possessed. In his proposed Address to Congress in April 1789, he described how the Constitution, with all of its wisdom, could ultimately come to naught by the depravity of the people and those who govern them, since the Constitution in the hands of a corrupt people was a mere ‘wall of words’ or a ‘mound of parchment.’”  (p. 220).

One of the geniuses of the Constitution is the way its principles were built by men who acknowledged the sinful nature of man. I believe that because it was based on a correct anthropology—one that recognizes our innate selfishness—that the Constitution has been so durable.

James Madison, a key driving force behind the Constitution, learned well from his teacher, Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, the devout Presbyterian who was the president of Princeton, who taught Madison what the Bible says about man’s corrupt nature.

Madison said, “All men having power ought to be distrusted.” Therefore, the founders separated power, explicitly, so that we would have liberty rather than tyranny.

I agree with William Gladstone, the distinguished 19th century Prime Minister of England, who declared, “The American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

Why this constant attempt to tear down those things which are right in our world? The Constitution of the United States is one of them. We have our work cut out for us to convince many fellow Americans of that truth.

This article was originally posted at JerryNewcombe.com.