Comments on a statement from the Michigan GOP as illustration of the moral incompetence of elected Republicans today
With most of the United States having finally, blessedly, returned almost to normal, the Biden admin decided now was the time to inject some fresh and indefinite abnormality and division with its new OSHA vaccination, or endless testing and masking, take your pick, mandate.
The masking part especially gets me because most workplaces have now long since given it up, and you’re going to force them to reimplement it because “emergency”, but such an emergency that you intentionally postponed the rule until after an election and also it doesn’t go into effect until four months after you announced it. That’s quite an emergency. (And do the DC inhabitants writing these rules even realize that most workplaces have long since given it up? DC is another planet, and yes that is another reason they should not have the power to make these sorts of rules nationwide.)
A medley of private companies like The Daily Wire and various states have already announced they will engage in legal action against the mandate, and I wish them rapid success. The statement issued by the Michigan GOP was, however, pitiful, and is worth commenting upon.
As many people say these days, progressives are out there offering a vision for what the world should be and making a moral argument for their vision. And far too often, Republicans respond by making a procedural objection… and complaining about procedure is going move exactly nobody these days. But that’s exactly what we see above. “Of course we agree that your goal is good but your methods are ineffective” is basically their complaint.
I’ve pointed out before that progressives basically have a utilitarian morality today where if, on a macro level, some government order does more harm than good by their judgement, then it is justified. It is interesting that our popular media still rejects this moral understanding - remember Picard in Star Trek: Insurrection, explicitly facing a situation in which inconveniencing a few hundred people would have helped millions, and yet he said, “how many people does it take before it becomes wrong, admiral?”. He was the good guy in that movie for, basically, standing up for individual / small group rights even though doing so might have hampered “the greater good”.
And yet modern Democrats are happy to live in “helps more than it hurts so it’s fine” land. Well the GOP objection above basically affirms that utilitarian understanding, affirming the fundamental way the Left is thinking in the midst of what is supposed to be objecting to the Left. So if the mandates weren’t causing hesitancy or causing people to lose their jobs, they would be just fine then? Near as I can tell from the MI GOP statement yeah, they would be. So if I believe “they will work” and the economic harm will be minimal then you really don’t have a case against them, huh?
Elected Republicans will continue losing the worldview battle in the public sphere unless they gather up the brainpower and the courage to make the (non-utilitarian) moral case. That case in this instance would include such things as:
Medical coercion is wrong. Period. There are no exceptions to that rule, at all, it’s wrong, period. It’s wrong finally because your body is your own to steward, it isn’t owned by a doctor, employer, public health official, or pharmaceutical company.
It is wrong, and an insult to human dignity, to compel people to behave in ways they think are irrational. That certainly includes something so intimate as forcing them to take part in medical procedures they don’t want, but it also includes generally compelling them to behave as if we are all in constant deadly danger from an airborne pathogen if they do not believe that.
It is wrong to compel you to share a history of your medical procedures with an employer. And that comes down again to the fact that it is your body, not their body, they are not entitled to know about everything that is or has been going on with it.
And finally a state that can regulate even your own body in this way can do absolutely anything to you. The “public health workaround” to constitutional government is complete. You think this vaccine is awesome? OK. You think the next mandate is also awesome? Oh right, you have no idea what it will be. So maybe you should stand up and join people in saying “no” now, then. The state has continued to issue new orders because we have a long history now of saying “well OK, we’ll accept that… OK, we’ll accept that… OK, we’ll accept that”. It is unfortunate but true that this only ends when enough people finally say “no”.
"Vaccine mandates cause hesitancy among those that are unvaccinated. Everyone should get this life saving vaccine." This could be clumsy wording from the party spokesman, but yes, it's a utilitarian, universalist message ignorant of, for one thing, the fact that we don't know much about adverse effects for children.
Relatedly, it's funny that vaccine resistance has created a path for conservatives to slip out of the "Trumpist, Insurrectionist" labeling that the Democrats were, and I think still are, attempting. Between Project Warp Speed and now Biden going all-in on vaccine edicts, both presidents are very committed to the "get vaccinated now" message.
My first thought here (and there is a default assumption on my part) do libertarians have a vision? Are they even capable of this given the nature of their fundamental beliefs? I’m assuming Republicans are basically libertarian in nature of course which if incorrect makes my query moot. I obviously think it is more right than wrong which is why I tend to be sympathetic to the “integralists”
ps: terrific essay as usual.