Biden's vaccine mandate is wrong, but the unvaxxed made it happen

Far more Americans have died from COVID than died fighting in World War II. The economy may be stalling. The psychological, political, and social costs of this pandemic — which is still not over — have been incalculable. And all that would be necessary to thwart this gloomy tide is for Americans to get vaccinated. Getting vaccinated is not only in the narrow self-interest of individual people. It is also in the interest of their families, communities, and their country. It seems both a paltry and trivial sacrifice to get vaccinated and to encourage others to do so, and a virtuous and patriotic thing to do as well. Instead, irresponsible actors are telling people the very opposite of that — that it is cowardly and unpatriotic to endure this potentially life-saving minor inconvenience. People are wearing their personal irresponsibility like a badge of honor.

This project is unwise, immoral, unpatriotic, and unvirtuous. It has also led to a political climate in which a fairly unprincipled politician — not a tyrant, but a mere politician — has the political incentive to behave lawlessly both on the vaccine mandate and on the eviction ban. Two wrongs don’t make a right, but neither does Biden’s wrong erase the wrongs that have made his actions politically attractive to him. That is my point: If people did the right thing, it would not grease the skids to more wrong things.