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.