George Washington’s Woke Vaccines

I COULD OFFER OTHER EXAMPLES of the Founding Fathers and their contemporaries expressing gratitude for these disease-preventing techniques, and celebrating the decision to require the troops be inoculated during the Revolution. Likewise, I could point to other examples of eighteenth-century religious figures who, like Mather, embraced these measures.4

The point, though, is that Hegseth’s claim—that requiring the vaccination of service members violates their religious freedom and is part of a “war on our warriors”—doesn’t hold water. The Founders appreciated the importance of the mandate.

Pete Hegseth and the broader Trump administration are concerned with a brand of anti-wokeism that is divorced from our shared reality. In the context of all the other things Hegseth and the administration have been doing, it seems like the ending of vaccination mandates is a small thing to get mad about.

But vaccines work. They are safe. They save lives. And mandating them in the military is a tradition that dates back to the Founding era whose 250th anniversary we are marking this year.

One last point, a question for Secretary Hegseth: If you really believe that mandatory vaccination violates “medical autonomy” and “the freedom to express . . . religious convictions,” then why stop with lifting the requirement for the flu vaccine? Why not do away with the requirements that service members be vaccinated against polio, measles, hepatitis, and the other diseases for which vaccinations are now mandatory? No? So much for the “era of betrayal.”