I am going to take a step back as say… I agree with David Garner on the importance of persuasion. If you look at my comments from beginning to end, I started with a position that I think is fundamentally conservative… do one's duty, take responsibility for the good of the community. This is an old Yankee mindset (though not limited to natives of New England) that encourages an active citizenry taking an active role in the shaping the community. It is an appeal to patriotism, civic virtue, and old fashioned values.
I grew up in a place where major decisions were made communally in "town meetings," and it is in my bones. For that kind of society, you need a certain amount of seriousness among the populace, a strong community spirit and (unfortunately) a far amount of peer pressure. Not to sound nostalgic, but I actually think a system where you socially chide your able-bodied neighbor for not keeping up their lawn (and show up to do the lawn work, without expectation of payment, of the widow next door) rather than a world with endless rules (HOAs) and ordinances. From the get-go, I was accused of the exact opposite… which I take responsibility for, since I obviously could have been clearer in my musings.
Of course: when community spirit breaks down and division sets in and appeals to virtue are not working… then you get ordinances and laws and more sticks than carrots from the government. I actually hate this… even if I (and I assume, when it comes down to it, all of us) agree that it is necessary… we just tend to disagree… vehemently… WHEN it is necessary.
And we disagree on whether it is necessary in this instance. I see Biden as moving towards mandates reluctantly, because vaccine uptake had stalled, and, after a ton of energy was put into persuasion… even to the point of outright bribery…. for the good of the country, we needed to raise the vaccination rates in the short term. Before winter. Before another massive wave of infection. Before our already strained health care systems had to absorb another massive blow.
[ETA: Accordingly I also (reluctantly) support mandates. I would probably go further than the Biden administration has gone. Not out of love for power and coercion, but because vaccine rates did stall at levels that left us with an ongoing pandemic indefinitely. And it did look like good faith efforts to persuade were not working because the vaccines, in and of themselves, had become politicized. There are communities in this nation with historical and cultural reasons to be suspicious… and so efforts to persuade and understand and listen should continue. But in my neck of the woods… the noted liberal enclave of Kentucky… the low vaccination rates are not being driven by minority groups. Instead, vaccines have become another rallying point in our ridiculous culture war… right up there with whether or not you eat at Chik-Fil-A. Except… 1,000+ deaths a day. Which raises the stakes a bit.]
I also reject the idea that all of this boils down to individualism… every individual's choice in the pandemic… to mask, or not to mask, to vaccinate, or not to vaccinate… has ramifications for others. That is not an obsession with power and control on my part (I don't seek to micromanage anyone's life… I can barely manage my own). It is just reality. When the ICU's get filled with unvaccinated patients, other people's surgeries get postponed or canceled. I have seen that happen in my family and in my community. It isn't the case that the unvaccinated solely bear the consequences of their decisions… others are also impacted.
So what I have attempted here… and likely failed… but alas… intentions matter… is call for greater responsibility. Greater civic pride, duty, obligation. Not because of laws… laws are there for when virtue has failed… but because we understand that we are part of our neighborhoods and our towns and our cities and our states and our country. David Garner might detect in here some lingering whiff of totalitarianism… but really, I do not think it is there. It's merely a call to consider responsibilities in addition to rights… not just what are my own individual freedoms, but also what moral (not legal) obligations do I have to others?
I would argue getting vaccinated is in 98% of the cases a responsible act, a mark of good citizenry, and a sign of neighbor love. I freely concede that in a minority of cases, this would not be so, so judgement should be withheld and compassionate responses created.
And I also decry: maybe too stridently… the reality that we face a challenge of a society lacking in virtue… in a political arms race with one side pitted against another… so that immaturity reigns. That is how we get appeals to religious exemptions from one corner… not always sincere… and attempts to remove religious exemptions from mandates from others (e.g. Maine's healthcare worker mandate). It is a zero sum game of power and control. Who is calling for greater responsibility right now?
Tom Nichols, Kevin Williamson, David Brooks… all have made versions of this argument better than I have here. But it is a problem. A big one, if we are going to endure as a free society. A republic needs more than a republican constitution and republican laws… it needs republican values. The same goes for a democracy.
As others have observed, politics are downstream from culture… and the politics of vaccine mandates in 2021 point to a sick culture.
