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Did U.S. Governments Violate Individual Human Rights? A Thomistic Response to COVID-19 Government Mandates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Nathaniel A. Moats Open the ORCID record for Nathaniel A. Moats [Opens in a new window]
Nathaniel A. Moats*
Affiliation:
Hillsborough Community College, Religion Tampa, FL
*
nmoats@hccfl.edu
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Abstract

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, some Americans have claimed that U.S. governments have superseded their jurisdiction and violated individuals’ human rights in the use of government mandates. Many citizens and politicians have also claimed that governments are utilizing the pandemic as a smoke screen to take individual rights away from citizens to gain further power. In light of such claims, I provide a Thomistic response to argue that state and local political authorities’ use of public health mandates were other-regarding in seeking to protect the common good in an unprecedented health crisis. Further, I argue that the characterization of individual rights atomized from community has led to an improper understanding of political authorities, individual rights, and our duties to our communities. Rejecting the reductive, skeptical, individualistic, and atomistic views that many Americans have engendered, I provide a Thomistic political orientation that more adequately helps us think about political authorities’ and citizens’ responsibilities within our political communities.

Keywords

COVID-19Human RightsGovernment MandatesThomas AquinasPolitical Authority
Type
Original Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 103 , Issue 1107 , September 2022 , pp. 640 - 661
Copyright
Copyright © 2022 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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