The logical conclusion of the movement against COVID vaccine mandates is to ban schools and employers from requiring any vaccines, and to repeal infant car seat laws, seat belt laws, smoking bans, etc.
There are arguments unique to the COVID vaccine (e.g., that it’s newer and therefore shouldn’t be mandated yet), but at the core of the movement is an insistence that “government and employers can’t tell me what to do,” even when exercising my “rights” overwhelms hospitals, orphans children, threatens my immunocompromised neighbor, and costs hundreds of thousands of lives.
It’s not as if those refusing vaccination are all willing to wear masks instead, or those defying mask mandates are all vaccinated; these are often manifestations of the same hyper-individualistic, I’m-not-my-brother’s-keeper, my-freedoms-trump-your-right-to-live, authority-is-only-legitimate-when-my-side-wields-it attitude.
Every legitimate exercise of government power to protect the inalienable right to life or serve the good of the community is seen as an erosion of the liberty of the individual, who must reign supreme.
It’s an ideology consistent with minority rule, and one that served slaveholders well. But the irony is that the community, the majority, the enslaved—they are individuals, too, and their rights should matter at least as much as the rights of the elite few who fear losing the disproportionate power they believe they’re entitled to.
This isn’t an argument for the opposite extreme, where the individual’s rights are trampled by the mob, as in so many populist revolutions, and trees are cut down en masse in the name of the good of the forest. It isn’t all or none, extreme A or extreme Z. The hard work of wisdom is required.