Ulysses Grant correctly understood that slavery caused the Civil War. Regarding that cause, he wrote that it was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.” Fighting to preserve one’s right to become infected with a potentially fatal virus and to infect others with that virus may not be a cause worse than slavery, but it’s close.
Yesterday, President Joe Biden announced “new federal vaccine requirements for as many as 100 million Americans… in an all-out effort to curb the surging COVID-19 delta variant.” These requirements are necessary in a country that has been more interested in debates over how to manage the feelings of the unvaccinated than it has been in reckoning with a political culture and its policies that have led to 652,480 deaths due to COVID-19.
Republicans and the unvaccinated who claim that vaccine mandates violate their civil liberties are misguided or wrong about the issue as a matter of law at best. At worst, they are sociopaths. Most Americans are vaccinated and most Americans support vaccine requirements. This is a good fight for Biden and Democrats to have because it is right as a matter of public health and because it is good politics.
Nonsense Consensus 