I do not favor a vaccine mandate enforced at the points of federal bayonets. But I do favor making life inconvenient and restricted for those who, out of misplaced political outrage and civic immaturity, refuse to do their part in what should be a reasonably straightforward national effort. Be as mulish about the vaccine as the spirit moves you to be, but be a good libertarian when restaurants and airlines decide not to serve you and businesses decline to employ you. You get to make your choices, and the rest of us get to make ours…

Vaccine obstreperousness is not a problem of the ideological Right exclusively, but it is a problem of the ideological Right to a considerable degree. Conservatives are very fond of advertising themselves as patriots and lecturing progressives about patriotism. They are very fond of sneering at “snowflakes” who insist that their eccentric sensitivities be accommodated at any social cost. Some on the right even speak of themselves as “nationalists,” and, like Senator Marco Rubio, lecture us about the “common good” when it comes to protectionism for Florida sugar barons while ladling out a scoop of single-serving libertarianism when it comes to vaccines: “Everyone must make their own choice.” But those members of Senator Rubio’s family who came to the United States as immigrants and refugees were not asked to make their own choices. They were given a list of mandatory vaccines — as indeed are the parents of children entering kindergarten, and many other Americans in many other contexts.