Many people like Blow believe that they should be able to dictate to others what risks they will take. Should Americans be allowed to engage in risky sports such as skiing, diving, and mountain climbing? We haven’t yet heard Blow’s pronouncements, but since he would insist that healthy people who don’t think that COVID poses any serious risk nevertheless submit to vaccination, it’s hard to see why people should be free to take even greater risks in sports or other activities.

Americans used to be, by and large, a live-and-let-live lot. They were content to mind their own business and allowed others to mind theirs. But the rise of the Nanny State seems to have spawned a huge and growing class of busybodies who think they’re entitled to run their own lives and also entitled to dictate how others will run theirs. This is the exact antithesis of liberalism. It is a return to old social modes where people were expected to obey their superiors.

I doubt that Charles Blow cares whether vaccine dissidents live or die. What he cares about, and dislikes, is that they are exercising their freedom to say “no” when he thinks they should agree to be vaccinated. What such authoritarians don’t understand is that only through liberty can we discover which ideas are good and which are bad.